It was last July 4 when Slayden Figg was attacked by a pack of three dogs. Figg was just a block from his home in Tower Grove East, taking his own dog, a Pomeranian-husky mix named Sonic, for a short walk, when the trio attacked.
“I wanted to get my dog run around before the fireworks started,” Figg, 29, recalls. They were on South Grand near Jay International Foods when he looked up to see the dogs—three bully style pit bull mixes, all unleashed—headed towards them. “I picked my dog up, and when I picked him up, they tripped me and just mauled us.”
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Erin Braitberg-Barker was driving by, witnessed the carnage, and pulled over to pepper spray the dogs and help Figg get away. She described the attack as “terrifying.” Figg was bleeding profusely when bystanders helped him into a car to get away from the carnage. When the ambulance they called never came, he drove himself to the hospital.
“I spent the night in the emergency room because I had to get, like, several stitches to my eyelids, my nose, all over my face,” he recalls.
The attack has since changed his life. Even though the neighborhood came together to help identify the dogs’ owner, and even though that person seemingly admitted a number of damning details to SLM, Figg has been left high and dry. The legal process has gone nowhere. Figg is left with $5,000 in medical bills he can’t pay (that’s even with insurance). And he’s now frightened any time he sees unleashed dogs—which, he says, he sees plenty in his neighborhood. As a result, he’s decided to leave the city.
“It’s just too many instances like this that have happened over the years, not just involving me, but neighbors and friends, and it’s just come to a point where I would rather get away to more of a quiet area,” he says. He and his girlfriend are now looking at a home in Florissant.
A native of southern Illinois, Figg was excited to live in St. Louis. “I really do love this city,” he says, explaining that he works as a therapist with homeless youth on the Northside. “But when you don’t get support from people that you feel like you should get support from, it’s upsetting.”
What’s especially upsetting to Figg is that the dogs were involved in a second attack two weeks later. In that case, neighbors had to intervene after the three pit bull mixes attacked a little dog named Daisy. It took two neighbors to fend them off (one neighbor put one of the dogs in a sleeper hold). Daisy, like Figg, was badly injured.
The city’s Department of Health, which supervises Animal Care & Control, told SLM that it initially placed the dogs on a “10-day bite quarantine, a process that is recommended by the CDC” after the attack on Figg. On the final day of that quarantine, they learned of the second attack, and began the process to declare the dogs “Dangerous or Potentially Dangerous.” Two of the dogs were impounded to a city shelter, but two more living at the same residence (presumably including the third dog in the attacks) were allowed to stay with the owner, Ryan Alford. He told SLM in August that he moved one to his home in St. Charles and sold one to someone in Texas.
Alford answered SLM’s call yesterday, and promised to call back at a better time after learning we had more questions about the incident. That call never came.
Last summer, Alford stressed that, while he knew the dogs would be a danger to other animals, he never thought they’d be a danger to people. He said they only got out because someone had twice broken into the yard of the home where the dogs were staying in Tower Grove South, seeking to steal a power washer and a lawnmower.
“I got rid of them, OK, it’s too much,” he said. “And again, I don’t want anybody in danger or any type of harm to anybody or their pets, so it was best case scenario to just be done with it.”
That month, Figg filed suit against both Alford and his girlfriend, who lived in the home in Tower Grove South. But last month, his attorney voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit. Court records show they were not able to serve Alford. And while they were eventually able to serve his girlfriend, Figg says his lawyers learned she did not have homeowners’ insurance—whicih they believed meant continuing to pursue the lawsuit would not pay off financially. (Figg consulted a second lawyer, who he says came to the same conclusion.)
“They said, ‘Yeah, this guy, if he’s got a history of evading services and doesn’t have homeowners insurance. You’re not gonna end up with some more money in a long time,’” he says.
Figg says he’s been in therapy and is trying to make peace with what happened. (At the suggestion of readers, he’s just put up a GoFundMe for anyone interested in helping with a donation toward his bills.) He says he’d like to see Animal Care & Control take these kinds of incidents more seriously. But he’s also aware that, despite those medical bills that are in now in collections, in some ways he’s lucky.
“I’m just glad to have my life,” he says. “That’s the way I look at things at the end of it. The damages are still gonna have to be paid for somehow, but at least, you know, my dog’s got his life and I got mine.”
