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A neighbour hit a crazed pit bull with golf clubs as the dog bit off a woman's hand.

The 52-year-old woman screamed in pain as the dog bit down on her arm and refused to let go during the shocking incident in Wythenshawe, Manchester.

Boxer and dad-of-two Matthew McManus, 35, smashed the dog with golf clubs until it let go of his neighbour.

The Manchester Evening News reports the woman remains in hospital and will undergo more surgery next week.

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Matthew told the M.E.N: “You do what you got to do. If there’s a fight to be had, I will have it. In a situation like that, you just deal with it.”

Having just arrived home from boxing training, he explained how he ran from his home on Holwick Road when he heard screaming.

He saw his distressed neighbour on the ground with the pit bull clasped onto her arm, saying: “Just kill her Matty! Get her off me!”

He grabbed an iron from his golf bag and used it to try and get the animal off the woman. His partner fetched about three replacement irons when successive shafts broke.

“She was on the floor just screaming and screaming. I just grabbed a golf club. I must have been at it four or five minutes. It just wouldn’t let go,” said Matthew.

“I could see it was going to go for me the minute it let go of her.”

He described how the dog eventually let go only to attack a second man who had stepped in to help Matthew.

The pit bull bit the second man several times in the midriff as the woman ran into a neighbour’s home.

Matthew described how he continued to fend off the dog and how the second man managed to pin the tiring animal to the ground.

Then other neighbours came out of their homes with rope so the pair could bind its legs and jaw together.

“You could tell it was getting tired,” said Matthew.

One neighbour said the pair had saved her life and were ‘amazing’.

The pit bull terrier has now been destroyed.

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A Greater Manchester Police spokesman confirmed that the pit bull, which had been detained and taken into kennels following the Wednesday night attack, was euthanised on Thursday evening.

It is understood that the dog’s owner - believed to be the injured woman’s son - agreed to have the animal destroyed.

The victim will undergo further surgery for the horrific injury on Monday, although it’s not known if the hand can be saved.