Woman Mauled By Dogs While Playing, Dies Of 'Severe Bite Wounds'

A South Carolina woman was mauled to death by her dogs with whom she was spotted wrestling outside her mobile home. According to the Washington Post, neighbors saw the animals turning on their owner and "eating her alive."

Nancy Cherryl Burgess-Dismuke was with her dogs, both boxer-mixes, when suddenly they started biting her arms Thursday in Greenville. Neighbors arrived and helped pull her away from the dogs and called paramedics.

When deputies arrived, “they discovered a neighbor was able to get the lady to safety and away from the dogs and observed an adult female suffering from severe injuries,” Lt. Ryan Flood, a spokesman for the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office, said in a statement. Authorities said that medics applied tourniquets to her wounds and rushed her to a nearby hospital.

Amber Greer, who called 911, told the Greenville News that, “It went from looking like they were really playing to them really eating her alive.” It is unclear why the dogs mauled their owner.

“When they (neigbors) finally got the dogs off of her, and finally got them to go, she threw her body over the fence,” Greer told the Greenville News.

Senior Deputy Coroner Kent Dill told the Post that the woman, who had sustained “severe bite wounds” on both arms, was “alert” and “talking” with paramedics, but she went into cardiac arrest at the hospital. The 52-year-old later died of her injuries, police said.

Authorities are investigating the death and are awaiting autopsy results to determine the cause and manner of death.

Burgess-Dismuke’s neighbors told the Greenville News after the attack that the woman was “a little angel.”

“She was a very sweet lady. She’d get up every morning and turn the music on and that’s how we’d know she was up,” neighbor William Long told the newspaper. “I’m really going to miss her.”