COCOA, FL - A 29-year-old woman in Florida has been charged with manslaughter after authorities say her two pit bulls launched an unprovoked mauling of her 50-year-old neighbor this past May in Brevard County. Local officials confirmed the suspect’s home was the subject of over a dozen prior calls to law enforcement regarding her dogs.
During the early morning hours of May 19, authorities say 50-year-old Jodi Cowan had taken her small dog outside for a walk down her residential street of Blue Bonnet Drive when the unprovoked mauling occurred. Two pit bulls, identified by authorities as being owned by 29-year-old Linda Cutler, had reportedly escaped from their yard, with the fatal attack being captured by another neighbor’s outdoor security camera.
In a press conference held in late May regarding the case, Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey called the video footage “extremely troubling and graphic,” describing how the two dogs could be seen “forcing [Cowan] to the ground, viciously attacking her, and eventually dragging her across the ground for quite some distance.”
Donnell Smith, Cowan’s significant other, reportedly heard her screaming outside and tried to stop the attack, reportedly “swinging a knife at the dogs and trying to drive them away,” according to Sheriff Ivey. Smith was speaking with 911 operators for approximately 8 minutes while simultaneously trying to render aid to his partner and ward off the two pit bulls.
Cowan was subsequently rushed over to a nearby trauma center following the attack; she succumbed to her injuries approximately four hours after her arrival.
In the wake of the fatal mauling, residents from Blue Bonnet Drive expressed scrutiny toward local officials over perceived mishandling of prior calls for service regarding Cutler’s dogs. While the two dogs accused of carrying out the fatal attack have been picked up by animal services and are scheduled to be euthanized, over a dozen prior calls regarding the animals from the past two years, including bite incidents, have left locals frustrated.
Days after the incident, Cowan’s partner Smith told a local media outlet, “Do I want [Cutler] to rot in jail? No. Do I want accountability? Yeah. There’s some other individuals that need to be looked at, some other entities that need to be looked at.”
Sheriff Ivey acknowledged the growing sentiments of perceived inaction from animal services in a late May statement on the investigation, saying, “While you might think that Animal Services has the authority to seize dogs that routinely escape from yards or that have even bitten someone, the unfortunate reality is that they don't.”
Sheriff Ivey went on to explain that bites alone don’t determine whether a dog is taken away from an owner, but rather the severity of the bite in question is the determining factor, noting that in the majority of cases “the most action our animal enforcement officers are allowed by law to take is the issuance of a citation and a fine.”
Jail records show Cutler is being held without bond at the Brevard County Jail on a manslaughter charge alongside additional charges of felony failure to appear, possession of controlled substances, and grand theft of a motor vehicle. The defendant’s next scheduled court appearance is slated for June 23.
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