TOPEKA (KSNT) – A postal worker is recovering, and the Topeka Police Department is investigating, after a dog attacked her Friday.
Sarah Stevens was delivering mail along her normal route. Around 11 a.m., she stopped at a house in downtown Topeka, a home she delivered mail to many times. She noticed the dogs in the yard, barking like normal, and walked towards the mailbox.
That’s when her husband said a pitbull hopped the fence and took Sarah to the ground.
“She’s like, ‘I got on top of him, and I pushed on him,’ and she actually got him to let go. At one point, she said he just twisted around and came right back at her,” Sarah’s Husband, Phillip Stevens, said. “She put her arm back up to stop him from getting anything else besides her arm. It latched on her arm again, she said. This time, he took me to the ground. She said all I could do is screamed for help. She said she was screaming for what felt like hours.”
Sarah Davis lives nearby. She said she heard Sarah Stevens scream, ran outside, and found her on the ground.
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Davis’ husband came outside with a firearm soon after and aimed at the dog.
“Even after he came back out here with the firearm, I didn’t even know he had it until he fired that shot. And my initial reaction was like complete surprise,” Davis said. “I have no doubt that if him or anyone else wasn’t able to stop him, that that would have ended up a lot worse because the dog was in dog mode and nothing was stopping that.”
“She said, ‘all I could do was I saw the gun,’ and she said, ‘I just pushed myself and I pushed my arm out as far as I could,'” Phillip Stevens said. “And she said, ‘thankfully, his brain clicked with mine somehow, and he took his chance.'”
Davis said the dog released and ran back into its yard after being shot. Soon after, she said a driver stopped and called 911. Sarah Stevens was rushed to Stormont Vail with open wounds and a broken arm. When the police arrived at the scene, Phillip Stevens said the man who shot the dog was ready to give up his gun, but because of Kansas’ “stand your ground” law, the shooting was completely legal.
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“Think of that dog as a person under Kansas ‘stand your ground law’,” Washburn Law Professor Rory Bahadur said. “If there was a reasonable belief that that person was trying to do that postal worker harm in a place where that postal worker is allowed to be, then you are allowed to use deadly force to protect yourself.”
The attack happened down the block from an elementary school. Davis says it’s not uncommon for dogs to walk around the neighborhood without their owners.
Sarah Stevens is taking time off work to recover, but her husband said above all, she is grateful for the man who saved her life and very happy to be alive.
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