Attack dog was used to guard site, court told

Giving evidence at Bolton Crown Court, electrician Mark Finn told how he was driving home on November 30, 2019,but stopped on Tempest Road, Chew Moor when he saw a woman on the ground with a rottweiller.

“At first I thought that the dog was going for the lady and then I saw the lady had hold of the dog by the collar,” said Mr Finn.

The woman was Christine Wilkinson, who denies being in charge of a dog which was dangerously out of control and injured pensioner Michael O’Brien.

A jury heard that Mr O’Brien fell, suffering concussion and a cut head after his whippet, Polo, was attacked by Billy the rottweiler, who had escaped from the building site, along with a second rottweiler, by pushing over a metal fence surrounding the property.

Mr Finn told how he grabbed the dog from Wilkinson, who was trying to restrain it following the attack, and took it back to a cage at the rear of a bungalow, which was being renovated.

“She said that she had let the dogs out to exercise them and they had seen the other dogs and gone for them,” said Mr Finn.

He added that Wilkinson told him the animals were being used as guard dogs at the site and added that he had noticed the metal fencing around the bungalow and did not consider that it was secure.

Wilkinson, aged 51, of Tempest Road, previously claimed in court that the rottweiler attacked Polo after the whippet and a pug cross called Chester, being walked by Mr O’Brien and his wife Jennifer, had “chewed the faces” of the dogs through the fencing.

But this was denied by Mrs O’Brien, who described Wilkinson’s suggestion that the rottweilers had responded to Chester and Polo being the aggressors as “complete nonsense”.

Mrs O’Brien told how she had been “traumatised” by the “frenzied” attack, in which Polo was severely injured but survived.

Mr Finn told the jury that when he put Billy back in his cage he saw no injury on the animal’s face.

The trial continues.