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Senior Says She Begged Police Not To Shoot Pit Bull They Say Attacked Her

By Alex Nitkin | July 29, 2015 3:08pm | Updated on August 7, 2015 10:17am
 Martha Castillón, 72, shows scratch wounds on her arm, which she said were from the pavement.
Martha Castillón, 72, shows scratch wounds on her arm, which she said were from the pavement. "[The dog] never attacked me, she never attacked anyone," she said.
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DNAinfo/Alex Nitkin

LITTLE VILLAGE — A 72-year-old woman who police say was bitten by a pit bull, leading officers to shoot it dead, isn't exactly thanking the officers.

In fact, Martha Castillón says she was begging the officers not to shoot Brownie the pit bull, she was never bitten by the dog and she doesn't think an officer was bitten either.

"They just walked up and pulled out their guns, while I was still holding [the dog] down, and I yelled 'don't shoot, don't shoot!' " Castillón said. "But they didn't say anything, they just walked right up to her and fired their pistols and killed her."

Castillón said she heard the dog, which belonged to her downstairs tenant and longtime family friend, barking in their backyard in the 2700 block of South Whipple Avenue at about 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Castillón grabbed the large dog by the collar but it dragged her across the pavement, scratching her arm and buttocks, she said. She called to her neighbors for help, and her neighbors called the police.

According to the initial account from police, the 72-year-old woman entered her backyard in the 2700 block of South Whipple Street around 8:45 p.m. and a dog owned by the first-floor tenant attacked her.

Alex Nitkin says the dog's owner wants to press charges:

When officers arrived minutes later, the dog also attacked one of them, police said. The officer's partner shot and killed the attacking animal, said Officer Ana Pacheco, a Chicago Police spokeswoman.

Police said the woman was bit several times and taken to St. Anthony Hospital, where her condition stabilized. The officer was treated for non-life threatening injuries, Pacheco said.

When told that the victim disagreed with the account, police said they had no additional information.

Castillón was taken to Saint Anthony Hospital, where she said she was treated for her scratches then released. She maintained that all her wounds were from the pavement, not the dog. And the Chicago Police Department's claim that the dog had attacked one of the officers, she said, was "lies, pure lies."

"She never attacked me — she never attacked anyone," Castillón said.

The dog's owner, 31-year-old Daniel Arredondo, said he was out buying dog food when he got a call from a neighbor telling him to come home. He returned to the sight of two police officers standing over his dog, which was lying in the yard "with her guts splayed out."

"I'm usually not the kind of guy who cries ever, but I saw that, and man, I just broke down and started crying like a baby," Arredondo said. "That was my dog, that was my baby. And she was dead."

Daniel Arredondo, 31, stands over the spot where two police officers shot and killed his dog. (DNAinfo/Alex Nitkin)

Named Brownie, the 3-year-old pitbull had given birth to a litter of puppies just a week earlier. Castillón was its first owner, but she gave it to Arredondo in 2013. 

Arredondo said police slapped him with a citation for "not having a dog license."

"They're standing there writing me up, and it was awkward, 'cause I think they knew they'd done something wrong but they wouldn't say it," Arredondo said. "I still don't understand what this citation is for. ... I got her all her vaccines and everything—I took good care of her."

Brownie, Arredondo said, was too peaceful a dog to do anything that would justify its death.

"There's a 3-year-old girl who lives in my building, and sometimes she'd pull [the dog's] tail, slap her around, stuff like that—and she wouldn't even growl. Everyone in the neighborhood loved her, people always came around asking to walk her or let their kids play with her," Arredondo said. "I'm trying to understand why this happened to her, and it doesn't add up. It's not right."

Arredondo said he wants to press charges.

"Those officers committed a serious crime here," Castillón said. "They deserve to be punished."

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