(Editor’s Note: The headline in this story has been updated with new information.)
A woman was mauled to death by two pit bulls in the village of Ashville Thursday as those around her watched and screamed for help.
Jo Echelbarger, 73, was taken to Grant Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead shortly after 4 p.m.
Echelbarger lived in a condominium complex in the 600 block of Kildow Court on the village’s north side, and she was gardening when two dogs broke loose from a nearby home and began attacking people, according to witnesses and a family member.
Pickaway County Commissioner Gary Scherer said the county dog warden, county prosecutor and city attorney will discuss whether to bring criminal charges in the case at a meeting on Monday.
Ashville police are handling the investigation but did not return calls for comment on Friday. Pickaway County Sheriff Matthew Hafey said the initial 911 call came in at 3:11 p.m. A second call followed about 15 minutes later.
Bert Cline, Ashville village administrator, called the incident “kind of a shock to the system,” noting that dog attacks are rare in the community.
Cline said he’d been told that legal action to remove the dogs had been filed in Pickaway County two weeks ago. He did not know why that hadn’t happened.
A neighbor, who described herself as a relative of Echelbarger, said the attack has small-town Ashville in an uproar. A local Facebook group has drawn at least 90 posts in the first three hours after the attack.
The neighbor said she wasn’t home when the attack happened, but Echelbarger’s immediate family told her the dogs — a pair of pit bulls — broke through the screen of a patio and attacked Echelbarger as she was crouched on the ground weeding her front yard.
People in the community are upset because they think something should’ve been done about the dogs earlier, the neighbor said. A dog belonging to a woman who lives nearby was attacked and killed by the same dogs last year.
In a post in a neighborhood Facebook group called Ashville’s Friendly Neighbor, the woman says that “I was attacked by the dog that killed my neighbor last October 25, 2023 2:36 pm,” adding, “My dog sacrificed its life that day to save mine.”
“The community is very, very angry that they have not been arrested,” the neighbor who spoke to the Dispatch said.
The Dispatch is not naming the owner because police have not confirmed whether anyone has been charged with a crime in the incident.
A woman described on Nextdoor witnessing the mauling: “I heard the screaming and ran down to see the dogs on top of her.” She said police shot one of the dogs five times, but it retreated into a home. Police entered to verify it was dead.
The other dog apparently ran away and attacked other people before it was put down.
Harrison Township shift Capt. Jeff Rosencrance said that fire and EMS units had responded to the same set of about 60 condos at least three times in the past year on reports of animal attacks.
“I can’t say for sure that these were the same animals. But the dogs involved on Thursday reside on Kildow Court,” Rosencrance said.
He described multiple injuries to the victim, calling it “a vicious and gruesome attack.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like this,” Cline said.
Sheriff Hafey, a dog owner, said, “It’s troubling. It’s unfortunate anytime someone gets injured by an animal.”
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio woman mauled to death in ‘gruesome’ pit bull attack
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