When Sue Gorman went to bed Monday night, she left her sliding glass door open a crack, as she often does. That way, her beloved service dog, Misty, and Misty’s playmate Romeo could come and go as they pleased. But she forgot to put a nail in the door frame that kept it from being pushed farther open.
It was a mistake that nearly killed her.

Tuesday morning, as Gorman lay sleeping with Misty and Romeo, a neighbor’s Jack Russell terrier, two pit bulls forced their way through the unsecured slider and attacked.

One of the pit bulls, a female named Betty, had tried to attack Misty before, Gorman said.

“She really has it in for my dog,” Gorman said. She “instigated the whole thing. They wanted to kill my dog.”

She said the pit bulls began attacking her when she tried to shield Romeo, a much smaller dog, from attack. Romeo was injured and later died.

Gorman described the ordeal at a news conference Wednesday morning at St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma, where she was being treated for deep lacerations to her face, forearms, back and breasts.

She might go home in a few days, but could be in the hospital longer if doctors determine her forearms need skin grafts, said trauma surgeon Paul Inouye.

Gorman, 59, was sound asleep when the two pit bulls escaped from a neighbor’s backyard and ran into her house.

Gorman lives alone and is disabled because of a brain injury sustained in childhood. Misty has been trained to warn Gorman if she’s about to have a seizure.

When the pit bulls ran into the bedroom, Misty fled. They turned on Romeo.

“It was really horrible what they did to him,” Gorman said. “It was butchery.”

Gorman tried to save the little dog, but the handgun she keeps in her bedroom wouldn’t go off. She then tried to beat the dogs off Romeo with a staff.

At one point, Gorman said, she managed to scoop up the Jack Russell and put him in a closet.

The pit bulls then turned on her. Betty led the attack, leaping at her face and nose.

Gorman had been angry fighting for Romeo’s life. Now she was afraid for her own. Gorman said she thought she’d be killed if the dogs got to her throat.

The pit bulls, in the meantime, had managed to open the closet.

They “pulled Romeo out of the closet and started ripping him up,” Gorman said.

She knew Romeo was beyond help, and used the distraction to back out of the bedroom.

She closed the door, then took her phone with her out the sliding glass door and called 911 just before 9 a.m.

She found Misty safe outside and locked herself in her car with her dog, waiting for help to arrive.

“I was really scared for” Misty, Gorman said. “She’s my soul mate.”

Gorman was in a wheelchair as she told her story Wednesday morning, with stitches across her nose, her lip and her forehead.

Her lower arms were bandaged to the elbows, with blood seeping through the bandages on her right hand.

Misty sat at her side at first, then on her lap. Friends had brought the dog to the hospital.

Ed Troyer, spokesman for the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, said deputies and animal control officers have responded to two complaints about the two pit bulls running loose before, but neither of those incidents resulted in a citation or a fine.

Once when officers were called, they found the dogs secured by the time they arrived and issued a warning to Betty’s owner, who wasn’t home.

Another time they responded to a complaint about one of the dogs charging a child on a bicycle, but no one was injured.

Betty’s owner, Zach Martin, was watching the other pit bull, a male named Tank, while its owner was out of town. He said Betty normally is well behaved and acts up only when she gets together with other dogs.

“It’s just when she gets in that pack mentality,” Martin said Tuesday. “By herself, I could walk Betty through a park without a leash.”

Martin said he doesn’t know how the dogs got out, because he kept them in a fenced backyard and secured Tank on a chain. He found the chain broken the day of the incident, he said.

Gorman said she’s called 911 about the dogs before, and several months ago chased them out of the house when they came in looking for Misty.

She called the dogs’ owners “nice people” and said they repaired a fence hole when asked, but the pit bulls started getting out again.

“I know pit bulls. Some are very nice dogs. Not all are like that,” she said.

Martin has relinquished ownership rights to Betty, Troyer said. That clears the way for the dog to be killed.

Officials were working Wednesday to get the owner of Tank to also relinquish rights to the dog, Troyer said, and were planning to pursue a court order to get custody of the dog if necessary.

Gorman said she wasn’t sure what should happen to the dogs’ owners.

Troyer said Martin and Tank’s owner could face criminal charges. The case is being reviewed by the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office.

Staff writers Steve Maynard and David Wickert contributed to this report.