JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 An ordinary afternoon of playing outside turned into a Jacksonville parent\u2019s worst nightmare when her 11-year-old daughter was mauled by a pit bull at a friend\u2019s home, her family said.<\/p>\n
Surveillance video captured the screams and panic as the dog grabbed Jakya Dawkins, who was taken to a hospital and is recovering, relatives said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMe and him were in the room and I heard her screaming at first,\u201d her mother said. \u201cAnd her screams just started being different so I looked out the window and he had her by the back of her pants and was just dragging her across the yard.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a panic, Dawkins\u2019 mom and stepdad ran outside to get the dog off of her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I jumped the fence, I just went to swinging and just making all kind of loud noises, just anything to kind of get the attention off of her, and onto me,\u201d her stepdad said.<\/p>\n
Dawkins said she was afraid and the attack happened out of nowhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just slipped out the doorway and then just charged at me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The girl is recovering from the injuries suffered in the attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer wrist is very bad,\u201d her mother said. \u201cIt was 11 centimeters from her artery and her wrist and her chest, her side, and her backside has been bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dawkins said she won\u2019t go outside until the dog, Lucky, is gone.<\/p>\n
News4JAX was at the home when Animal Care and Protective Services arrived to check on the dog involved in the attack, but they didn\u2019t take the dog. ACPS explained why.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a dog that put somebody on their own property and it\u2019s an unfortunate situation but after speaking to the owners, they have the dog contained they will be holding for the quarantine period and we visually put eyes on the dog today,\u201d Michael Bricker, ACPS division chief said.<\/p>\n
The dog\u2019s owner, Chelsea Rodriguez, said she is apologetic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did not mean for my dog to go above and beyond,\u201d she said. \u201cHe was just protecting his home. What he thought he was protecting his home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dawkins\u2019 stepfather said it\u2019s important always to pay attention to your children and their surroundings.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause a situation like this, it can happen in the split of second,\u201d he said. \u201cNobody wants to see their child go through that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dawkins\u2019 family said their focus now is helping her recover physically and emotionally from the attack.<\/p>\n
ACPS said the dog remains under a mandatory quarantine while the agency continues its operation.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 An ordinary afternoon of playing outside turned into a Jacksonville parent\u2019s worst nightmare when her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-293615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}