A 70-year-old resident of Joshua Tree died Wednesday, Jan. 16, when she was mauled by four dogs that belonged to people she was trying to evict from her property, and the victim’s brother is now calling on the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office to charge the pit bulls’ owners.

Lana Bergman died shortly after the attack, a sheriff’s news release said. No one has been arrested or charged, and the investigation is continuing.

Bergman’s brother, Palmdale resident Jay Barnett, said in a phone interview Friday that at the request of a friend of Bergman’s, the dogs’ owners had been allowed to move their trailer onto her property in the 59000 block of Sunflower Drive for a couple of days. But two days turned into two weeks, and Bergman asked them to leave on multiple occasions. On Jan. 16, the day Bergman was killed, she again asked the owners to leave, Barnett said.

While Bergman was home alone with the dogs that day, the Sheriff’s Department said in a news release, they mauled her.

The dogs’ owners have not been publicly identified.

“She was a very sweet, very kind person who never really thought of herself and was always thinking of others. She was a log lover — she had a lab — and this is the height of irony that she could wind up being killed by dogs,” Barnett said.

He compared the dogs to “loaded guns” left outside, in danger of firing and injuring someone. Barnett said the owners should be charged with criminal negligence or manslaughter.

“People have to take responsibility for their actions or lack of actions,” Barnett said. “All we want is justice for Lana.”

He also disputed some of the statements in the sheriff’s release. Bergman was not living with her husband; they separated three years ago, Barnett said; Bergman had not cared for the dogs for a year, and she did not consider them family pets. A sheriff’s spokeswoman invited Barnett to call investigators about the discrepancies; he said he had already done so.

The dogs were taken by San Bernardino County Animal Care & Control and appeared to be well taken care of, the release said. Animal Care spokeswoman Lana Culp said Friday that the dogs remained in that agency’s custody and that its officers were working with sheriff’s investigators on the case.

Advocates of the breed say pit bulls are smart, loyal and good family pets, and that the media have sensationalized their attacks. Detractors say pit bulls are unpredictable, that their attacks cause more harm than those by other breeds and that their owners sometimes don’t train and care for them properly. Dogsbite.org, a website highly critical of vicious dogs and their owners, says pit bulls killed 284 people in the U.S. from 2005 to 2017, citing media reports.

Sheriff’s investigators ask that anyone with information on the attack call the Morongo Basin station at 760-366-4175. Information may be left anonymously at We Tip at 800-782-7463 or its website at wetip.com.