SAN FRANCISCO – A San Francisco man who survived a vicious attack by not one, but two pit bulls says he’s lucky to be alive. Pablo Rocha said he escaped being mauled to death by scaling a tall fence.
A short walk home from the gym near Alameda and Vermont streets took a terrifying, nearly fatal turn just after 6 p.m. on May 25 for Rocha.
Surveillance video shows Rocha being taken down by two pit bulls. He tries to get up multiple times, but is attacked again and again.
Another camera captures his escape. Bloodied and battered, he climbs a nearby fence, as the two dogs circle below, inches again from his legs.
“This is my blood, this is my blood,” he said pointing to the marks still left on the fence.
Rocha underwent surgery and received 30 stitches in his upper arm at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.Â
“I just remember the noise of my bicep muscle being stretched,” Rocha recalled. “In that moment, I thought I would die, I don’t believe I would die like this, I just thought I would die,” he said as he choked up.
“I saw my friend was trying to help me, but the dogs were just ignoring him,” added Rocha. “This gate saved my life.”
Rocha’s friend Eduardo Pajeu tried unsuccessfully to fight the dogs with a water bottle, and ran to get help. Meanwhile, Rocha was left in the locked and enclosed space, pleading for help from passing drivers. Video shows him trying to get their attention.
His phone had been tossed in the street during the attack.
“The cars just stopped and left, stopped and left,” he said. “More than 20 cars stopped, nobody helped.”
Rocha said police later told him the majority of the 911 calls received at that time, described him as a burglary suspect.
“The bites of the dogs hurt a lot, but to know the reason that they didn’t stop to help me was very painful,” Rocha said.
Pajeu helped identify the dog owners from the nearby RV when officers arrived. Rocha said he walks by that particular RV on a daily basis, but had never seen the dogs or the owners.
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San Francisco man survives being attacked by two pitbulls.
SFPD said it arrested two suspects, 39-year-old Hilary Flynn and 31-year-old Jesse Ali of San Francisco. The woman is facing charges, including failure to control a dangerous dog, resisting arrest and false impersonation. She also had outstanding warrants outside of San Francisco. Ali’s charges include resisting arrest and harboring, concealing, or aiding another person when you know they committed a felony crime. The court released the male suspect on his own recognizance with electronic monitoring and a stay away order from the victim.  Â
“It’s been the better part of seven years that we’ve been fighting to get our neighborhood cleaned up, and it gets cleaned up, it comes back,” said Robert Fountain, Rocha’s husband. “We call 3-1-1 constantly.”
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