TOLEDO, Ohio — A resident of an east Toledo neighborhood said a pair of vicious dogs were on the loose Saturday afternoon, attacking neighborhood pets and property.
While no one is sure where they came from, Tammy Pegorch, who lives on Licking Street, said the dogs terrorized them and their pets for three hours, allegedly killing two cats in the process.
Pegorch now feels less safe in her own yard and doesn't understand why Lucas County Canine Care and Control didn't respond to requests for help.
Pegorch has been taking care of stray cats for the better part of a decade.
"They show up, people throw them out of cars," Pegorch said. "I fix them, spay them and let them go. Trap and release."
She lets the cats stay in her backyard and roam around her property, giving them food and shelter. She said she gets as many as a dozen roaming around at any given time.
"In the winter, I have a heated front porch for them," Pegorch said.
But on Saturday, Pegorch said the cats she keeps safe were attacked and killed.
"They killed a cat right there, tore back up the front way and then went into his yard and drug my black cat right there," Pegorch said.
Pegorch claims she saw two dogs terrorizing the cats from her window and that she and her granddaughter ran outside screaming. She says the dogs then went after her granddaughter.
"They went after my granddaughter. She's 13 and she maced them," Pegorch said. "We ran after the dogs and we chased them with a cat food bowl, and we got them in a neighbor's yard and kept them there and we started calling the police and the dog warden and canine control."
A spokesperson for the Toledo Police Department confirmed one of its crews did arrive in time to see Pegorch and a group of neighbors successfully corral the dogs inside a neighbor's fence. But, Pegorch said the officers didn't have the tools to remove the dogs and they didn't call for additional help.
"They did not call canine control. As I understand, you call the police and the police call (canine control)," Pegorch said. "Well, no one called anybody and the dogs had gotten out of that yard."
By this point, TPD had already left and the dogs were on the loose again, making a beeline right back into Pegorch's yard, killing and eating a second cat.
"And then we ran them off again and grabbed a brick because there's kids at the park," Pegorch said.
She says the dogs then left for good, last seen running past Waite High School.
But they left plenty of damage in their wake. Pegorch buried the cats in her yard and has a tiny memorial for them, and her granddaughter refuses to come out of the house.
With the dogs still loose, Pegorch feels the responsibility falls to the city.
"I hope the city proposes some kind of methods to control this type of situation before it turns on children," Pegorch said.
A TPD spokesperson told WTOL 11 that LC4 can only respond to dog-catching calls if the dogs are contained, but it's unclear if they were called out in this situation.
LC4 told WTOL 11 it is working on a response to the incident.