Dog attack victim salutes her heroes

Ellie Williams is a self-proclaimed Navy brat who moved to Georgia in 1996 and ultimately planted roots in Houston County two years later. Just days before New Year’s Eve, Williams finally completed a five-month long journey back to some sense of normalcy. It was around 8:00 in the morning on July 6, 2021 when her life took a near-tragic turn. That’s the morning when she and Smokey, her 20-pound feist, went walking in her Sand Hill community and found themselves viciously attacked by a neighbor’s shepherd mix.

“He wasn’t just in a little four-foot fence,” Williams said of the attack dog, “This was a very tall pen that he jumped out of.”

At times, as Williams shared the story, she would close her eyes and grimace, as if she were seeing the scenes replay through her mind.

“My husband was at work, and me and my dog were just walking. The dog that attacked us didn’t bark first or anything. There was no warning. He came out of nowhere. All I saw was a mouth full of teeth coming at me from behind the shrubs.”

Williams assumes that the dog’s initial plan was to attack Smokey—she’s not sure. All she knows for certain is that his teeth first locked on to her hand, and it only got worse from there.

“When I got my hand back, he grabbed my arm and took a big bite. I got my arm back and was trying to get my dog and get away, but he got my leg—my thigh—and knocked me on the ground.”

Williams suffers with Meniere’s disease (a condition often described as a severe case of vertigo, wherein the person who has it can easily lose balance). Because of that, it wasn’t difficult for the dog to knock her off her feet.

She said, “Once I got on the ground, I began kicking with my free leg to get him off the leg he had in his jaws. He grabbed my ankle at that point, and there was nothing else I could do except scream for help.”

That’s where the people she calls her heroes came into the story. Williams said one female and one male neighbor—neither of whom she knew personally—came from their homes still wearing pajamas.

“The guy’s name is Steven; he’s maybe 24 or 25 years old. The girls name is Autumn, and she’s even younger,” Williams said. “They came out of two different houses. I was screaming as loud as I could, saying, ‘Help! Help! Somebody please help me! A dog is attacking me! He’s going to kill me. Please don’t let him kill me! Please help!’ I was saying anything I could think of.”

Her specific screams were the result of a technique she learned years ago in a self-defense class. “My boxing coach is a 20-year Marine vet, retired. He was a drill instructor and knows all about hand-to-hand combat and lethal weapons training,” she shared. “At the gym, he did self-defense classes that were free to women in the community. I attended every single one of them.”

That was back in 2018. Williams didn’t know she would actually need to use what she learned. Ironically enough, that same year, she graced the cover of Houston Home Journal’s annual “Health & Wellness” magazine because of her training. Williams said that everything she knew to do on the day was learned from those classes.

“We learned, don’t just scream; say something. Scream loud to get people’s attention, but then you need to say something so they know what’s going on. That’s why I was screaming and including the things about the dog.”

Williams said when Steven—whose last name she wasn’t sure—came out, he had something that appeared to be a large stick in his hand. It turned out to be a garden hoe.

“He’s the one who got the dog to release my leg and got him off of me. Then Autumn [Robinson] got there. Even though Steven got the dog off of me, the dog kept trying to come back, so he was busy keeping him from returning. I was bleeding so badly from the chunk the dog had taken out of my leg, and I kept saying, ‘I need to stop the bleeding.’ Well, we didn’t have anything to make a tourniquet with.”

With a voice filling with emotion, Williams went on to say, “So, Autumn, bless her sweet heart, took her top off and used it to tie up the wound and slow down the bleeding. She didn’t have anything on under her pajama top, but she didn’t worry about that. She wrapped her top around my leg, because that was the worst wound, and she stayed there, holding it as tight as she could while Steven stood with the hoe guarding me from the dog.”

While Houston Home Journal was unable to get in touch with Steven, we did talk to 19-year-old Autumn Robinson. She was in the early phases of preparing for work when she heard Williams’ frantic screams.

“It sounded terrifying,” Robinson described. “I went outside and all I saw was this big creature on this woman, and that dog just didn’t look right to me.” Once the dog was forced off of Williams, Robinson said, “I looked down at her and I saw blood everywhere! I could actually see the inside of her ankle and her arm. I had never seen anything like that before.

“She was begging me to stop the bleeding, and I didn’t have anything to stop it with, so I just took my shirt off and tried to tie it as tight as possible. I didn’t mean to flash everybody,” she added with a laugh, “but I had to stop the bleeding. I was scared because she looked like she was turning pale.”

Other neighbors began to come from their houses and several of them, including Steven’s girlfriend, called 911. Robinson overheard some fussing at the 911 operators because help was taking too long to get there.

“I started panicking when I heard Ms. Ellie say she couldn’t feel her leg. I’m not a licensed nurse by any means,” Robinson said. “I just know blood belongs in the body and hers was on the ground because she had a huge hole in her leg.”

Robinson credits Williams for helping her to stay calm, in spite of her severe injuries. “I’m sure she probably thought she could die, but somehow, she was offering me comfort. She kept telling me I was doing a good job, and that helped me to not lose it. I feel like she helped me that day as much as I was helping her.”

Emergency assistance did finally arrive, and police ultimately had to shoot and kill the dog as his aggressive behavior persisted. Williams was taken to Macon to receive attention from Atrium’s trauma unit. Surgeries and skin grafts were performed there, but because she found the hospital beds uncomfortable for her Meniere’s disease, her husband checked her out the following day and she was taken to the ER in Perry.

The attack has left Williams with lingering issues. She is now an animal lover who has a fear of certain types of dogs. When she hears barking, flashes of her assault tend to bombard her mind and result in panic attacks. Even Smokey, who was also injured that fateful morning, now fears other dogs.

Still, Williams desperately desires to turn her traumatic experience into something positive. She wants to pull together a block party/cookout in a nearby park to celebrate those who helped her and educate her community.

“I would love to have animal control come out and give everybody a heads up on animal safety and what to do in the case of an attack. I want to have the police come out and share information on immediate first aid and what a person can do for themselves until professional help arrives. I think it would be amazing to pull together something in the community to help others either avoid something like this ever happening or know what to do in case it does.”

The attack left Williams with months of pain, medical appointments and therapy. She has deep body scars that will never go away. Yet, she is thankful to be alive because of her heroes.

“They got the dog off me, they got the bleeding slowed down and stayed with me. They made sure 911 was called. If it weren’t for them, I think the dog would have killed me. I might have died. I’ve already gone to both of their houses and told them how much their help meant to me. But I need all of Houston County to know that regular people of all races and ages will still come together and put their own lives on the line to help a stranger. to them, I was a stranger. To me, they are heroes.”

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