Blind woman fears pit-bull attacks on city streets

An Opelousas woman who has been legally blind for the past two years says she is frightened to walk the streets after she experienced a series of pit bulls attacks against her and her guide dog.

Poor sidewalk and street maintenance by the city have already made her walking hazardous, but Agnes Courville explains that the unwarranted pit-bull attacks she has encountered since March have now made the situation with her disability more unbearable.

Courville, who has rapidly advancing macular degeneration, addressed the issue during a May 8 meeting of the Opelousas Board of Aldermen. At the meeting, Police Chief Donald Thompson and Mayor Reggie Tatum promised to assist her with her issue.

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In an email to the Daily World last week, Courville wrote that the police chief and mayor have not contacted her since she presented the matter to the board at that meeting.

At the meeting, Courville, who just received her trained guide dog on May 3, said the animal and its training cost $50,000 and that it serves as her main access now.

Since her blindness accelerated, Courville said, she lost her driving privileges.

“I became a pedestrian and I am on the sidewalks,” she wrote in the email.

Courville, who teaches in the Park Vista Elementary French immersion program, normally walks daily from her residence near South City Park to school each day accompanied by her dog, she told the board.

In a letter presented to Tatum and the board at the meeting, Courville wrote that the first attack by the loose dogs occurred on March 4, the day after she returned with her dog following a three-week training session with guide dog experts in Florida.

Couville’s letter describes being thrown on her back during the attack, which included attempts to injure her guide dog. The attack, she wrote, left her with bruises.

During the dogs’ attack, she wrote, the pit bulls jumped on her back and managed to bite her dog, despite her attempts to shield her animal from harm.

“I did not have enough time (on March 4) to use my Mace (pepper spray). I was also trying to protect my guide dog,” she wrote to Tatum and the board.

The attacks, she said, have persisted since March 4.

In her email to the Daily World, Courville wrote that she has contacted Opelousas animal control warden Joey Stelly about the loose dogs. In addition, she wrote that the problem has been reported to St. Landry Animal Control.

“Joey Stelly is aware of the dogs and who they belong to. He has received other complaints.

“(The dog attacks) can cause trauma because it is sudden, savage and unpredictable. It is random violence, which overwhelms a person’s ability to take control and cope,” she wrote in the email.

Courville said the owners of the dogs, whom she did not identify, have the dogs unleashed and are without collars.

The pit bulls, she said, are usually located in front of the house where the owners live.