HAWTHORNE, Fla. -- The 74-year-old man attacked by two pit bulls has died.
Roy McSweeney was taken off life support Wednesday afternoon. He was attacked last week, outside his own home.
Action News has also learned the dogs have attacked before. We have a copy of a lawsuit filed after an attack in 2010. It says the dogs were only quarantined for 10 days before they went back home to their owner.
Action news has new pictures of the pit bulls that attacked McSweeney. They've since been put down, but we've learned this isn't their first attack. A woman who came out of the home where the pit bulls escaped from didn't want to answer many of our questions. She claimed the dogs didn't live there, and wouldn't give us her name.
"They're not my dogs," she said.
The first attack happened in January of 2010 in the same yard where McSweeney was mauled. The dogs escaped from this same home. The police report says the dogs were aggressive, and even had to be tranquilized to take them out of the cage and to the animal control shelter, but they were returned after ten days and deemed not dangerous.
Action News went straight to the Putnam County Sheriff's office to find out why. It was a dead end. The sheriff's office, which oversees Animal Control, would not answer our questions.
Action News did talk with McSweeney's daughter. It was tough for her to fight back tears.
As for the man attacked last year, his attorney tells Action News he's pretty shaken up over McSweeney's death because it's bringing back all the emotions from his own experience.
