Rural dog problem

An ugly attack on a teenager exposes California's rural dog problem

A pack of dogs in rural Mendocino County seemed to display “extreme violence," one official said

By Matt LaFever

Mendocino County’s Bear Pen Road is a place where only locals go. Branching off Highway 101 just south of the Mendocino/Humboldt County line, it winds through hills and forests, with only a few isolated outposts along its path. Last month, a teenage girl was mauled by a pack of dogs in this desolate area. She had no obvious ties to the region and was initially identified as a Jane Doe at the hospital, where she was taken in serious but stable condition with large sections of tissue torn from her body. The girl’s injuries were so extensive that one official told SFGATE, “This is way above and beyond any dog attack I’ve personally ever seen.”

When authorities reached the girl’s father, David Watson, they learned the dog attack was only the most recent incident in a tumultuous six months for his 15-year-old daughter, whom SFGATE is not naming to protect her privacy because she is a minor. The story of how a child with no money, phone or vehicle ended up in this remote wilderness, surrounded by dogs so aggressive that they could have killed her, lays bare some of the North Coast’s ugliest struggles.

A difficult case

Watson first spoke with SFGATE by phone on Nov. 29 after stepping out of his daughter’s hospital room. It had been nearly a month since a pack of dogs had mauled his daughter. As she heals, both physically and emotionally, the stories she shares with her father continue to evolve. “Even the story that I knew just a couple of days ago is a bit different than what I know now,” Watson said.

To understand how the girl ended up in the wilderness of Mendocino County, her father points to the months before the attack. By April 2024, she had run away from the Sonoma County home she shared with her father around 20 times, by Watson’s estimation. Sonoma County’s Family, Youth and Children Division had labeled her a “chronic runaway,” he said. She had previously been placed in the Valley of the Moon Children’s Center in Santa Rosa, but that month, the agency instead placed her in a group home in San Diego, nearly 600 miles away from her Sonoma County home, with the hope being that the distance from familiarity would keep her there.

The plan failed. At the group home, she befriended another chronic runaway whose boyfriend had a car. On Sept. 28, 2024, the two teens left the facility with nothing but the clothes on their backs. 

Watson said their flight triggered a missing person case with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office. SFGATE reached out to request more information about the case but was told by Kimberly King, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, that “since this case is related to a juvenile we cannot provide any information.”

Ted Appel, a spokesperson for Sonoma County, told SFGATE that the county could not confirm whether an individual or family was working with family services, nor could it share any specifics about a particular case, citing state law.

SFGATE called Watson again earlier this month to ask for more context about his daughter’s frequent flights from home.

“I raised her as a single dad for 15 years,” Watson said, admitting to the challenges of single parenting. He acknowledged that at least one of her placements at Valley of the Moon came after she reported abuse by him, but he adamantly denied physically abusing her. He sometimes took a “tough-love approach,” he said, but he insisted she “never saw or experienced any” physical abuse, citing his own upbringing and how he’d “had my teeth knocked down my throat.” He said he did sometimes distract himself from the stress in ways that made him less connected to his daughter.

“It was easier to focus on video games sometimes,” he said.

Acknowledging potential criticism, Watson stood firm: “People can try to spin it, but at the end of the day, I did my best.”

Over a month after she left the San Diego home, authorities would find the missing teen brutalized by dogs and struggling to breathe in remote Mendocino County.

‘I was being eaten’

On the morning of Nov. 6, Watson’s daughter was deep in Mendocino County’s wilderness. According to her father, she said she and her companions arrived on Bear Pen Road on Oct. 2, following a four-day journey north from San Diego. Their exact route remains unclear, but Watson believes they stopped in Ukiah and Fort Bragg along the way.

On Bear Pen Road, they encountered a woman who had previously hosted the runaway friend and agreed to do so again, Watson says he was told. Early on Nov. 6, the woman warned Watson’s daughter that police would be in the area. To avoid being discovered as a runaway, she was advised to hide, so she retreated to a small shed on the property.

What happened next was the stuff of nightmares. The girl was confronted by a dog, a white pit bull that seemed intent on attacking her. “She said that a white pit bull came in very aggressively, got in her face and started, like, sniffing her face,” Watson said. “And she got really scared. So she covered her face with her hands.”

The attack escalated. The white dog grabbed her hoodie and dragged her out of the shed. Other dogs joined in. “Between four and seven dogs” descended on her, Watson said, quoting his daughter’s upsetting retelling: “But I couldn’t tell because I was being eaten.” When first responders first found her, police radio traffic indicated she was barely breathing and required a medevac for emergency medical treatment.

The extent of her injuries is chilling. “Her right arm was nearly eaten off. They had to take muscle from her back to rebuild the arm, as the entire tricep was destroyed,” Watson explained. She is also likely to lose her fingertips due to the severity of the wounds.

Mendocino County sheriff’s Capt. Quincy Cromer detailed the investigation into the attack in an interview with SFGATE. Animal Care Services personnel called dispatch at 11:45 a.m. on Nov. 6 to report the ongoing dog attack. Given the remote location, the nearest Mendocino County sheriff’s deputies were 70 miles away, delaying their response. Other law enforcement agencies, including California Highway Patrol, arrived first and helped get the girl to emergency medical care.

First responders initially had no way to identify the victim, treating it as a “Jane Doe” case, Cromer said. Investigators later crossreferenced the girl with active missing juvenile cases, eventually confirming her identity.

Five days later, after her condition stabilized, detectives were able to interview her in her hospital room at the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. In their discussion with her, Cromer said, investigators finally began to understand how a 15-year-old fell victim to a violent pack of dogs in remote Mendocino County. 

‘Extreme violence’

Mendocino County’s Animal Care Services is actively working to locate the dogs responsible for the attack, but their efforts have yielded little success, said Amy Campbell, a representative for the agency.

Campbell confirmed that the dogs were known to the agency; Animal Care Services had received a complaint on Oct. 30 about a large number of dogs on the property where the attack occurred. The complaint focused on the dogs’ living conditions rather than any aggressive behavior, Campbell said. Animal control officers responded to the property the next day but were unable to speak with anyone there. 

After the teen was attacked, Animal Care Services personnel “returned to the property where the attack occurred and impounded a total of 12 dogs that were living in deplorable conditions, none of which were believed to be involved in the attack,” Campbell said. 

Cromer, the sheriff’s captain, said it’s possible criminal charges could result for the owners of the property, but he emphasized that such charges would only arise if there was evidence the dogs acted under human command. Right now, “we have no evidence” of that, he said.

Instead, he said, it’s more likely this would be a case of animal cruelty charges.

“The condition of the animals that were encountered has led to investigative efforts regarding cruelty potentially perpetrated against the animals,” Cromer said, adding, “The majority of dogs are not born mean and angry and aggressive, but they can turn into that.”

Still, he acknowledged, “This is way above and beyond any dog attack I’ve personally ever seen.” He said the dogs seemed to display “extreme violence.”

A California Healthline analysis of statewide dog bite statistics revealed that serious dog bite injuries are more common in rural areas. Modoc, Inyo, Lake and Siskiyou counties top the list. With rural residents owning more dogs than urban dwellers, attacks like the one on Watson’s daughter feel like an unsettlingly likely worst-case scenario.

Cromer also addressed the persistent issue of feral dogs in Mendocino County. “We get calls on them regularly,” Cromer said, noting that many residents acquire dogs for security purposes but fail to control them when they turn wild. 

As for the Watsons, David continues to visit his daughter in the hospital, where the painful reality of her injuries is impossible to ignore. “It didn’t look like my child. To have to see her like that, it was just absolutely heartbreaking.” 

Despite her agony, Watson is awed by his daughter. “My daughter is tremendously strong,” he said. “We’re strong f—king people, man. She’s probably stronger than me.” Each small step forward in her recovery brings a glimmer of hope.

“The last couple of days, she’s been getting up out of that bed,” Watson shared. He also sent SFGATE an image of a colorful painting she had made at the hospital — another sign of her slow but sure recovery.

The emotional scars will likely last much longer, for both daughter and father. “I’ve been in some wild places, man,” Watson said. “But even in those places, I’ve never seen a wild pack of dogs running around that could potentially eat another human being.”