Big Dogs Break Out of Garage, Chase Kids at Bus Stop

Two large dogs – a St. Bernard and an Akita – were picked up by Oakland County Animal Control after they escaped from a garage on Woodmonte Drive on Tuesday morning and surrounded a group of children who were waiting at the school bus stop at Creekmonte and Woodmonte.

"People were pretty scared," said Emily Ross, a resident of the Silvercreek subdivision, where the incident occurred. "Kids were crying and one woman was running away."

About 20 kids, including 5- and 6-year-old children, who attend  wait at that bus stop in the morning, said Kelly Scarpa, whose 6-year-old son rides the bus.

Ross, whose children normally wait at the bus stop in the morning, said the bus driver had to pick up children around the corner from the usual stop because the dogs were blocking the stop. Ross' husband drove their children to meet the bus.

"No matter what, it’s safety first for the kids," said Mary Jane Wells, operations coordinator for the Rochester Community Schools Transportation Department. "If they felt unsafe at the stop location, the bus driver made a wise decision to modify the route.”

Many of the residents had removed their children from the bus stop because of the dogs, opting instead to wait with them either inside their homes or in the car until the bus arrived, Ross said.

“My neighbor had called me earlier about it, so we knew that (the dogs) were out there, so we just kept our kids inside until the bus came," Scarpa said. "It was very disruptive to the bus driver.

"There were two joggers who were chased and my neighbor across the street was out with her little dog." She said her neighbor was injured trying to keep her small dog away from the two large dogs. "She actually fell into some holly bushes and hit her knee. Her knee is all bruised and scraped up."

Ross was worried for the young children. “One of the girls – the little one – she’s this tiny kindergartener; she ran ahead and the dog started running toward her," Ross said. "She started crying and ran back toward her dad.”

Someone placed a call for help and when Deputy Terry Cashman of the Oakland County Sheriff's Office arrived on the scene, he witnessed the chaos. "I saw the two escaped dogs start running down to the corner several hundred feet away to where the crowd was gathered," Cashman wrote in his report. "The St. Bernard started to chase a small child."

According to the report, four men formed a line to shield the child from the dogs, then kept the dogs at bay while the children boarded the school bus. The dogs then walked back to their home, where a neighbor used dog biscuits to persuade the dogs to enter his garage until animal control arrived.

Ross said the situation was chaotic with neighbors yelling, "Get back in your house, get back in your car."

“It disrupted a whole lot of people," Scarpa said.

The owners of the dogs were on vacation at the time and had the dogs housed in the garage during their absence, according to the police report. A housesitter had been hired to attend to the home and dogs, though nobody was home when the dogs escaped through a broken screen in the garage. A third dog, another Akita, was still in the garage.

Oakland County Animal Control has received prior dog complaints about the dogs' owners, according to the police report. Cashman called animal control and the dogs were  removed from the home.

“Nobody’s happy with the situation," said Ross, who is president of Silvercreek Homes Homeowners Association. She said the subdivision association is weighing its options on how to deal with the situation.

"We try to be really reasonable with people if they do something that’s against the rules or a nuisance to other people," she said. "Usually we just try to talk to them and say, 'Hey, we don’t think this is a good idea; can you do this or this?' and try to work out a situation that works for everyone.”

Ross said she will continue to work with the dogs' owners to find a solution. “I want these people to be happy living here, but I just don’t want our kids to be afraid when they go outside,” she said.

The dogs' owners did not return messages from Patch for comment.