Doug Mouton / Northshore Bureau Chief
Email: dmouton@wwltv.com | Twitter: @dmoutonwwl
HAMMOND, LA -- The mother of a little girl attacked by two pit bulls Friday afternoon says her daughter is still fighting for her life.
Mikayja Oliver, 8, suffered multiple bite wounds while playing in her neighborhood.
"I've heard stories like this before, but you never think about your own," said Natasha Oliver. "And when I saw her, when I saw her on the ground, it was horrible."
Friday afternoon, Mikayja and her 11-year-old best friend, Desiree Mitchell, were racing through their neighborhood.
According to Desiree, while the pair were on Easy Street around the corner from their homes, two full grown pit bulls ran out of a home and straight towards them. The dogs ran past Desiree and attacked Mikayja.
"One grabbed one of the legs and other grabbed the other leg and dragged her back into the yard," Desiree said. "They bit her in the neck, in the back of the neck. Between the legs. On her legs. All up and down her arms. On her face."
Large blood stains remain on the street three days after the attack. Desiree tried to pull the dogs off her friend.
"I grabbed them and pulled them," Desiree said, but she could not help, so she ran into the home of the pit bull owners.
"And told them that the dogs were attacking my friend," Desiree said. "And they said, 'What dogs?' I said, the dogs that you're responsible for."
Eventually, the dog owners came outside to help pull the dogs off Mikayja, but that delay in response angers many in the neighborhood, including the girl's mother.
"What kind of person sees a child that needs help that's being attacked, gruesome as that was, and you did nothing?" Natasha Oliver said, "It was your dogs and you did nothing? What kind of person are you?"
Tangipahoa deputies arrested 39-year-old Bridgette Harper and 19-year-old Natalie Newton on two counts of negligent injury. Both posted bond and are now free.
"I would like to see justice for Mikayja, because she only did what she always does," Natasha Oliver said. "She was only 8. There was nothing she could do."
Natasha Oliver wants the two women prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and she wants both dogs put down.
The dogs are being held at the Tangipahoa Parish Animal Control Facility in Hammond. The dogs will be observed for a 10-day period to see if they have any diseases or conditions that may have been passed down to Mikayja.
After that 10-day observation period, Tangipahoa Parish Animal Control Director Chip Fitz said, he'll ask for the dogs to be put down.
The Tangipahoa Sheriff's Office said the case is still under investigation and they won't have further comment until later in the week.
"It felt like it was avoidable, you know," Clarence Raiford said in front of the home where it happened.
Raiford owns the home, and rented it to Harper and Newton.
"They have a fence circling the property. Solid wooden fence. If the dog would have been in the fenced area, and the two doors going into the house wouldn't have been open, then none of it would have happened."
Raiford said he would have never rented the home to the women if he knew they had pit bulls, and he said once he found out, he demanded the dogs be removed.
"I'm hurting for the child," Raiford said. "And angry because the dogs were here."
The worst bites are on Mikayja's right leg, where the pit bulls hit an artery. She was in surgery all night Friday night until 3 a.m. Saturday, according to Natasha Oliver. The scene was bloody.
"My oldest, he's 15. He saw her on the ground, and he broke down and he fell," she said. "He went into a seizure. Never had a seizure before."
Now, Oliver said, doctors cannot tell her when her daughter may be able to come home.
