SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – A La Mesa man says a stop in downtown San Diego to hand out clothes to the homeless turned into a terrifying pit bull attack that nearly cost him his leg.<\/p>\n
Devein Payne was left with a lower leg covered in skin grafts after the attack, which happened in early September in the 1100 block of C Street. A month later, a bandage still wrapped the wound.<\/p>\n
Payne said he stopped that night and spotted a homeless woman in her 20s he recognized and wanted to help.<\/p>\n
“There was a crowd of people here, wanted to see if someone needed a jacket and clothes I had in my hand,” Payne said.<\/p>\n
About the time gave the woman a jacket, a fight broke out between two homeless men, agitating the woman’s loosely leashed pit bull. After throwing some pants to the woman, Payne tried to leave.<\/p>\n
“The dog lunged around the opposite side of her and locked onto my leg, threw me into the street, and shook me twice. Took a big chunk of my leg. She said I’m really sorry, and she just disappeared,” Payne said.<\/p>\n
Payne used his own T-shirt to apply a tourniquet and drove himself to an emergency room, where a nurse removed the makeshift bandage.<\/p>\n
“She took the T-shirt off, she said, \u2018omigod, call the plastics surgeon,\u2019” Payne said.<\/p>\n
Doctors tended to the gruesome injury and made clear the stakes were serious.<\/p>\n
“He told me if this isn’t treated right, I could lose the lower extremity of my leg,” Payne said.<\/p>\n
Doctors were able to save his leg. Payne was discharged 4 days later and still has staples in the wound.<\/p>\n
Payne, a handyman, says he suffered nerve damage and the long-term prognosis isn’t clear.<\/p>\n
“I have limited range of motion in certain angles. I can’t push on the gas pedal for long,” Payne said.<\/p>\n
Payne reported the incident to the San Diego Humane Society. In a statement, officials said they are treating the incident “very seriously” and an “active investigation” is ongoing.<\/p>\n
Payne, who was once homeless himself, is familiar with the risks posed by dogs with homeless owners.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen people walking past encampments get bitten. People have dogs that are not trained or secure enough. A rope around a neck is not safe enough,” Payne said.<\/p>\n
While Payne says she has heard the pit bull that attacked him has a history of attacks, I haven’t been able to confirm that. Payne believes any dog declared a dangerous dog should be muzzled.<\/p>\n
I brought his concerns to Humane Society officials. They said it’s a County process, often involving a hearing, and once a dog is declared dangerous, conditions like muzzling are an option.<\/p>\n
“Knowing this dog is aggressive, it\u2019s very scary. This could have been a child easily,” Payne said.<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – A La Mesa man says a stop in downtown San Diego to hand out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75],"class_list":["post-483641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}