Woman thought she was going to die in dangerous dog attack
- Published
A woman who was mauled by three dogs in a terrifying attack that was filmed and then shared on social media says she thought she was going to die.
Speaking publicly for the first time, Lakaydia Reynolds said the incident in south London caused "excruciating permanent pain" to her arm.
She told the BBC "those dogs were going to kill me" and she only had a "split second" to escape.
Ms Reynolds suggested there needed to be more checks on the owners of dogs.
Her comments come as the government looks to bring in a ban on American bully XL dogs, following a spate of recent attacks, including the death of a man in the West Midlands.
Speaking to the BBC's Reliable Sauce podcast, Ms Reynolds, 24, says she does not know who filmed the footage of her attack on 6 June and was upset how quickly it went viral on social media. It has been watched tens of thousands of times. The BBC has chosen not use this clip because of its graphic nature.
Police investigating the case discovered one of the dogs involved was an American Pitbull Terrier, a dog banned in the UK. It was later put down. The other dogs remain in police kennels while further inquiries are carried out.
Ms Reynolds said without "proper management", dangerous dogs will continue to hurt people.
"There needs to be more rules about who can own a dog, such as dog licences," she said. "There needs to be some sort of a way of controlling who has a dog and whether dogs are trained, or not."
Ms Reynolds, who "absolutely adored dogs", had been walking through a small park in Abbots Park, Lambeth, on her way to a driving lesson.
It "turned out to be the worst day of my entire life," she told the BBC.
Two dogs approached her after they were taken off their leads by their owner. Ms Reynolds asked the man to take the dogs away from her, but says they did not respond to his calls.
One of the dogs then jumped up and bit her on the face, and the second started to bite and scratch her legs.
"I was screaming, asking for help, asking him for help," Ms Reynolds said.
She says the owner of the dogs came over to try to intervene, but he had a third dog on a leash, which then also began attacking her.
"It was just me against these three dogs. The owner himself actually started asking for help, which made me even more scared - because I thought, if he can't control his dogs, then who can?"
Ms Reynolds believes the fact that she was wearing a long-sleeved hooded top helped protect her from more serious injury, when one of the dogs began biting her arm.
"I had to loosen my hoodie and take my hoodie off, and tear my arm out of the dog's mouth," she says. "If I didn't get away within the split second that I did, I knew those dogs were going to kill me."
Ms Reynolds sustained scratches, a lip injury requiring plastic surgery and nerve damage, and spent a week in hospital.
Her right arm is no longer mobile, meaning she is not able to play rugby, or her violin.
Ms Reynolds says she cannot feel half of her hand - "and the other half is just in excruciating permanent pain. Because it is nerve damage it feels like my arm is on fire every single day".
As for the long-term impact, Ms Reynolds says the "full prognosis" will only be known in about 18 months - the length of time it usually takes for nerve damage to heal.
"I've been impacted mentally, socially, emotionally and physically," she added. "One of the most difficult things for me is the fact that I can't do anything myself, so I have to rely on people to help me."
Which dog breeds are banned in the UK?
Under the UK's Dangerous Dogs Act, which prohibits any dog that is "dangerously out of control", it is against the law, external to own the following breeds:
Pit Bull Terrier
Japanese Tosa
Dogo Argentinos
Fila Brazileiro
Dogs that share physical characteristics to the banned breeds - such as cross breeds - are also banned.
After a man died in an attack by a suspected American bully XL dog in Walsall last month, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced he was looking to ban the breed in England, Wales and Scotland by the end of the year.
A ban would add it to the four existing breeds already prohibited under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991.
The bully XL is said to have originated in the late 1980s, when American pit bull terriers - linked to the attack on Ms Reynolds - and American Staffordshire terriers were crossed.
In Ms Reynolds' case, the Metropolitan Police says the owner of the dogs had left with the animals before officers arrived. He contacted police on 7 June - the day after the attack - and voluntarily handed three dogs to officers.
He was interviewed under caution on 15 June and remains under investigation.
Ms Reynolds says she was unable to watch the video showing her being attacked as it "brings back and resurfaces the trauma of everything".
"Knowing that people can watch the thing that ruined my life - everybody can see it," Ms Reynolds said.
"The hardest thing was knowing that somebody recorded it - I thought I was going to die. So it was like, 'were you going to record it until I had [died]?'"
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