Nine-year-old Lawrence boy attacked by dogs is recovering at home – Moulton Advertiser

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Gavin Peoples, right, rides his bicycle with the help of his mother Stephanie Overton in his Lawrence County front yard last Wednesday. Peoples received more than 30 bites when he was attacked by five dogs Sept. 10. Overton said he is walking well now, but his left arm has limited mobility. {Photo by Tristan Holmes}

Gavin Peoples, right, rides his bicycle with the help of his mother Stephanie Overton in his Lawrence County front yard last Wednesday. Peoples received more than 30 bites when he was attacked by five dogs Sept. 10. Overton said he is walking well now, but his left arm has limited mobility. {Photo by Tristan Holmes}
Nine-year-old Gavin Peoples is recovering at home over two weeks after he was seriously injured in a dog attack that left him “terrified,” and he has limited use of his left arm along with visible wounds.
Peoples was attacked Sept. 10 by five dogs allegedly belonging to a Lawrence County neighbor and spent the next five nights at Huntsville Hospital, where he underwent a four-hour surgery and had 30 lacerations that required sutures. 
His mother, Stephanie Overton, said Wednesday that doctors remain concerned about the injuries to his left arm and left leg where she said he has lost some muscle but not enough to receive skin or muscle grafts. 
“They said if he wasn’t moving his arm enough, they might start physical therapy,” Overton said, which the surgeon prescribed in a follow-up appointment Thursday. “He has started moving his left arm some but he can’t straighten it out all the way and he’s walking great.”
Overton said doctors told her Peoples will make a full recovery, “it’s just strengthening that arm where that muscle is missing.”
The surgeon on Thursday said Peoples, a fourth grader at Speake Elementary, could return to school next week. 
Overton said Peoples’ teacher and principal came to visit him at his house. His classmates wrote him get-well cards and gave him a “big goody bag full of candy,” according to Overton. 
Peoples lives at home with Overton, his father, and his two brothers and two sisters. He cheerfully ate apple slices Wednesday and played a Spider-man video game while talking about the dog attack.
“I was riding my bike … and the big blue dog came up and bit my leg,” Peoples said. “I was terrified.”
When the attack occurred, Peoples was near his home on Lawrence County 582, which is slightly west of the Oakville Indian Mounds. Lawrence 582 is a dead end on the east, and its west end connects to Lawrence 186.
Peoples said he grew weary while staying at the hospital but playing games on his Chromebook helped pass the time.
Overton said her son struggled emotionally while he was in the hospital, but since coming home and seeing his siblings and father, he has greatly improved. He was at home with his brothers and sisters on Wednesday afternoon.
“He is definitely happier being around other kids, but we’re still going to get him in therapy,” Overton said of possible mental health issues stemming from the incident.
Overton said the doctors told her it was possible Peoples could develop post-traumatic stress disorder, but that therapy should help. 
She has said he was fortunate his injuries weren’t a bigger threat to him physically. “The doctors said if the bites on his upper left arm were 6 inches higher, it would have gotten his throat and there would have been nothing they could have done,” Overton said in a previous interview.
She said while Peoples was under anesthesia during his surgery, he was given rabies shots.
Overton said the owner of the dogs, which she described as one bulldog mix and four smaller dogs she believed to be terrier mixes, had previously owned another dog that presented a threat.
“That same guy had one of those snappy dogs that nipped at one of our daughters,” Overton said. “From what we heard though, he shot it once he found out it happened.”
According to the Sheriff’s Office, the co-owner of the dogs allegedly involved in this month’s attack was in jail on an unrelated charge at the time of the attack and his girlfriend, Tanya Lynn Emery, 36, of Moulton, was tending to the dogs. She was charged Sept. 14 under a 2018 law that makes it a crime if a dog known by its owner to be dangerous causes physical injury due to the owner’s reckless disregard of the dog’s propensities.
Under the state law, a dog’s “owner” includes anyone who “harbors a dog, or who has a dog in his or her care or acts as the custodian of a dog.”  It is a Class C felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. 
At the request of the Sheriff’s Office, a veterinarian euthanized the dogs believed involved in the attack on Peoples on the day of the incident.
Emery remained in the Lawrence County Jail on Thursday in lieu of $10,000 bond. She is scheduled to appear at a preliminary hearing Oct. 3 at 8:30 a.m.
Overton and her family have four cats that stay in the house and nine American bulldogs they keep in pens in their front yard. Her son’s experience has not made her leery of the American bulldogs, a breed which she said is not vicious. 
“They’re great family dogs and they’re not aggressive at all,” Overton said. “They just lay around. Totally different temperament and that’s one thing we’ve looked at is the temperament of these dogs.”
Overton and Peoples said they will now forever feel uncomfortable if they see dogs in public they do not know.
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