Dog that bit man, 2 children, quarantined

A pit bull that attacked a man and two children at a Lithonia-area home Saturday has been quarantined at Lithonia Animal Hospital.

The dog will be held for 10 days from the time of the attack, said DeKalb County police spokeswoman Bettina Durant.

Maurice Jones, 40, said he was in the back of a home at 2168 Poplar Falls Ave. on Saturday afternoon when he heard children running into the house screaming. As soon as he got up to investigate, the dog was grabbing at his calves.

The dog also bit the two children, 3 and 14. The 3-year-old was bitten in the head, Jones said, while the 14-year-old was bitten in the ankle. Jones said the children are relatives of a nephew’s friends. He did not know their names.

The children were transported to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston. A hospital spokesman on Monday declined to release information about their condition.

.Durant said investigation into the incident is ongoing and that charges are pending against the dog’s owner, but she could not say what type of charges and could not identify the owner.

Jones said the children had been playing in the back yard of the home before the incident. The dog and another pit bull are on the other side of a fence that Jones said was about 6 feet high. Jones said the fence was in disrepair and that the animal somehow got through.

“We had sent letters to (the neighbor) the week before about fixing the fence,” he said.