The dogs didn’t stop attacking until a Galveston County deputy shot and killed one of them.
BACLIFF, Texas — We’re hearing from neighbors who frantically tried to help a man fatally mauled Sunday night in his driveway by his own dogs.
The Galveston County Sheriff’s Office said a deputy had to shoot one of them to finally end the attack. Sadly, it was too late for the owner.
This all happened at a home on Louisiana Avenue in unincorporated Bacliff.
“It was just a horrific experience for sure,” said neighbor Jesus Excontitta. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
Excontitta tells us he actually broke a machete while trying to save his neighbor, 45-year-old Jose “Eddie” Padron Castillo, from the victim’s own pit bull dogs.
“You see there’s blood everywhere,” Excontitta said.
He and others say the attack started when Castillo tried to keep his dogs from going after passers-by in a golf cart, as seen in a surveillance image. Another image shows Excontitta running back with a second knife after getting one of the dogs to let go of Castillo.
“He was crying, pleading, pleading and crying and I’m just, ‘Sorry, Eddie,’ and stabbing the dog and poking and poking and poking, slicing him, slicing him and poking him, poking him,” Excontitta said. “That dog was not letting go.”
“And you could hear somebody screaming for help,” said Excontitta’s sister, Shaine Starrett.
Starrett called 911 during the chaos.
“My brother had stabbed it several times with the machete and then with the butcher knife and it wouldn’t stop,” she said.
It didn’t stop until the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office says a responding deputy shot the dog still latched onto its owner’s arm.
Castillo was pronounced dead at the hospital in Clear Lake while both dogs were later euthanized.
Authorities showed back up at the house Monday to try and locate a third dog.
“The dogs grew up with him, you know what I mean?” Excontitta said. “They’ve always been fed, fed good and I don’t know why something like this would happen.”
Authorities say your best bet when it comes to dangerous dogs is to alert either animal control or law enforcement about the threat of such dogs. In Bacliff, Galveston County is the agency to take calls like that, but it varies from city to city, so check online.
The sheriff’s office confirms previous calls to this area regarding aggressive dogs and more than one neighbor told us they avoided walking down this part of the street because of Castillo’s dogs.
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