Fatal mauling causes animal control changes in Fulton County
About a year and a half ago, Donna Nguyen and her fiance moved on to an acre of land at the shore of Dixie Lake No. 1 in Union City.
Nguyen was in her early 60s. She had spent her life in the suburbs south of Atlanta. She had also been using methamphetamine. But she moved to the secluded bend of Lakeside Drive and began cleaning up — her house, her drug habit, her life.
“She was making a new start down here,” said her fiance, Rodney Bunn.
Then, in August, her fresh beginning came to a sudden, shocking end just down the street from her new home.
At least one dog fatally mauled Nguyen in an incident so gruesome — and so poorly handled by multiple agencies — that it is changing the structure of animal control in Georgia’s most populous county.
The Union City police officer dispatched to the animal attack in progress dismissed the call for at least 22 minutes before heading to the scene.
Animal control officers working for Fulton County’s contractor, LifeLine Animal Project, euthanized four dogs seemingly not involved in the attack while hiding the incident for almost two weeks from the Fulton County Police Department, which investigates criminal cases involving animals.
There were no eyewitnesses, and by the time LifeLine notified county police, it was too late to collect DNA to determine what animal attacked Nguyen.
The Fulton County Police Department closed the case in October.
“Unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to make any charge in this case or identify which animals were the attackers,” Police Chief W. Wade Yates said at a news conference.
The Union City officer, and two LifeLine employees who did not promptly notify Fulton police, were fired. But there are more substantial consequences for LifeLine.
The organization will no longer employ a 21-person field services team that handles animal control calls in Fulton County, founder and CEO Rebecca Guinn said. That team is being reconstituted in the Fulton County Police Department. Interested LifeLine employees must reinterview for their jobs. The transition is expected to be complete by New Year’s Day.
LifeLine and Fulton County had been discussing such a transition before Nguyen was attacked, said Guinn, adding that it will improve future processes.
“Following the tragic attack on Ms. Nguyen, it became clear that there were gaps in communication between city and county law enforcement agencies, and between local law enforcement agencies and LifeLine,” Guinn told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an email.
The Fulton County Police Department will respond when animals attack humans or other animals, according to LifeLine. County police will also handle animal control calls where no one is hurt, such as roaming dogs or wandering animals suspected of rabies.
LifeLine will continue running the county’s animal shelter.
“LifeLine Animal Project extends our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Donna Nguyen,” the organization said in a statement. “Following the tragic attack, the Union City Police Department responded to the scene and directed LifeLine officers to collect the dogs present. Although Union City should have led the investigation, one of our employees failed to report the incident to LifeLine leadership or Fulton County officials. That employee and her direct supervisor are no longer employed with the organization.”
Fulton County paid LifeLine almost $9.4 million this year for its services, according to documents obtained by the AJC under the Georgia Open Records Act. The County Commission is scheduled to vote Wednesday on renewing the LifeLine contract, without field services, for about $2 million less next year. Guinn said she was pleased with the proposal.
Nguyen’s 43-year-old son, Charles Ingram, grew up in Union City. He lives in Coweta County now, but said he welcomes the improvements in the county where he was raised.
“I hate that it was my mother that had to be the reason for the changes,” he said.
‘A gypsy soul’
Nguyen was born Donna Murphy in 1963. She attended Campbell High School in Fairburn.
She moved around southern Fulton and northern Coweta counties. She had four children. Her Vietnamese surname was the remnant of a marriage that ended in 1991. She had eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
She worked as a house cleaner and had a job in a convenience store, Ingram said. But several years ago, she fell off a horse and it dragged her, injuring her back and her head, he said. After that, she received disability payments.
Bunn met Nguyen 14 years ago through her brother, whom he worked with.
“Me and Donna just hit it off,” said Bunn, 56. “She had a little smile about her that caught my eye.”
Nguyen liked to dance, paint and listen to old country music, her family said. She was outgoing and liked to joke around, cook and clean, Ingram said. At her memorial service, Ingram described her as “a gypsy soul.”
She was known for her generosity. About a month before the dog attack, a friend’s daughter complimented Nguyen’s boots, and she took them off her feet and offered them to the girl, Ingram said.
Like everyone else, she wasn’t perfect, her family said. She was charged with trespassing and possessing methamphetamine in Coweta County in 2020, records show.
Ingram said his mother used to isolate herself when she was on drugs. But toward the end of last year, she told him she was getting clean, and he could tell from her behavior that she had quit.
By then, Nguyen and Bunn had moved to their new home. They lived in a camper outside a two-bedroom cabin they were fixing up. Sometimes, they would sit on lawn chairs outside the camper and look out on the pond ringed by pine and hickory trees.
“It’s like a little piece of heaven right here,” Bunn remembered telling her.
Bunn said he and Nguyen planned to get married but hadn’t set a date. They bought matching silver rings engraved with crosses and leaves.
After the dog attack, Bunn said, hospital workers cut Nguyen’s ring off her infected finger.
‘Absolutely horrific’
Nguyen made her last phone call at 8:45 a.m. on Aug. 1, to Bunn.
He was driving to his construction job. She told him she was going to take the bus to the bank in Palmetto. She said she’d be home when he got back.
At 10:50 a.m., a man called 911 from his house about a quarter mile down Lakeside Drive, according to a Fulton County Police Department incident report the AJC obtained under the Georgia Open Records Act. He said he heard a woman screaming and several dogs barking. He later told police he was scared to go see what was happening because of crime in the area.
Union City police officer Isaiah Adkins was dispatched to check it out.
The man called back at 11:03 a.m. to say something was still going on and the dogs were still barking. The dispatcher told him an officer had already responded.
About that time, a postal worker drove by and saw Nguyen lying on the side of the road. After delivering a package and circling back, she saw Nguyen better.
Nguyen’s injuries “were absolutely horrific,” the Fulton County police investigator said in the report.
“Both of her arms had been eaten down to the tendons with most of the skin missing,” the report said. “She had a large bite out of the back of her neck that was so deep it exposed the tendons. Her left knee had been eaten down to the tendons and almost to the knee cap. She had deep gaping open wounds down both of her legs and inner thighs, along with her left foot. Her right ear was sliced completely in half and there was a large open wound on her right cheek.”
The postal worker called 911 at 11:12 a.m., according to the incident report, and told police she never saw any dogs attacking Nguyen. A black lab mix was sitting by her head and a black and white terrier was walking around. They seemed to be protecting Nguyen.
Nguyen told the postal worker that a dog attacked her — and that she was going to die.
Adkins was dispatched again. He arrived 32 minutes after the first 911 call. He later told Fulton County police he never went the first time.
“He stated that it was a low priority call and he chose to go to a higher priority call of a missing person instead,” the county police report said.
When Adkins arrived at the scene, Nguyen was curled up in a pool of blood next to the mail truck, according to body camera footage the AJC obtained under the Georgia Open Records Act.
The black lab walked down the street to Adkins’ car and led the officer to the injured woman.
“I need water,” she said over and over again, between grunts of pain.
“Do you know which dog bit you, ma’am?” Adkins asked. The response was unintelligible.
A minute later, a medical crew arrived. The first person to see Nguyen uttered an expletive. Adkins asked again which dog bit Nguyen. “Can you hear what she’s saying?” he asked a medic.
More Union City fire crews, a Grady ambulance, a police sergeant and animal control officers arrived. More cursing ensued.
“She’s chewed up,” a Union City deputy fire chief said.
“She’s going to lose her arms,” said another man in a fire uniform. “Twenty-five years, I ain’t never seen nothing that bad.”
All the while, dogs roamed the scene: the black lab, two black and white terriers and a brown and white boxer mix.
In the body camera footage, they never growled or behaved aggressively. No blood was visible on them. They were going in and out of a front yard, jumping over a dip in the fence. Two more dogs — the smallest a terrier and a tan boxer mix with an injured eye — stayed behind the fence.
A man walked up carrying a huge bag of dog food. He said he was a friend of the resident, Scott Evans, who was working in Meriwether County about an hour away. The friend was there to feed Evans’ dogs.
No one told Evans’ friend what had happened. Standing outside Evans’ house, LifeLine’s field manager, Jessica Kim, ordered her two trainees to seize whatever dogs were “involved in the situation.”
“What situation?” Evans’ friend said with a look of concern. “Chasing a car?”
The animal control officers asked him to help put the dogs in their truck. None resisted. Two of the dogs walked voluntarily to the truck, apparently wanting the ride. The incident report said one of the terriers later jumped out of the truck and escaped.
‘Do it quick’
When Bunn came home that afternoon, he saw that Nguyen had left a McDonald’s breakfast sandwich for him. To his amusement, she had also left the sausages from two other sandwiches for their two pit bulls.
But she was nowhere to be found.
Friday night turned into Saturday. Saturday into Sunday.
“I went everywhere I could possibly go and called everybody,” Bunn said.
Bunn said Union City police told him to wait 72 hours before filing a missing person report. They didn’t tell him they’d responded to his fiance, severely wounded, down the street from their home, he said.
First responders and hospital staff couldn’t find an emergency contact for Nguyen, Ingram said. The address on her identification card was outdated, from when she lived near Ingram and rented from the same woman as he did. The hospital called the landlady. But the landlady didn’t know Ingram was Nguyen’s son.
Three days after the attack, Ingram received a call from a friend who’d heard the story from the landlady.
Ingram drove right away to Grady Memorial Hospital. He called his siblings and Bunn on the way.
When Bunn arrived, Nguyen’s oldest daughter, Melanie Johnson, was there. There was a breathing tube in Nguyen’s mouth, Bunn said, but her eyes were open.
“Mama, you remember Rodney?” Johnson asked.
Nguyen blinked.
“I love you, baby,” Bunn said.
Nguyen blinked at him. There were tears in her eyes.
“I think she was telling me bye,” he said.
More than a week passed. Nguyen opened her eyes a few times, but was never able to speak, Ingram said.
On Aug. 13, doctors and surgeons convened a meeting with Nguyen’s family, Ingram said. Sepsis was setting in. They agreed to amputate both her arms and possibly a leg.
That night, Ingram got a call from the hospital. After doctors took Nguyen down for surgery, they realized the infection had worsened, Ingram said. It was affecting her liver, kidneys and brain. The doctor recommended end-of-life comfort care.
Bunn couldn’t stand to be there when they took his fiancee off life support. He left her side for the last time the night before it was scheduled to happen.
Nguyen’s family prayed. “If you’re going to do it,” Ingram asked God, “do it quick. Don’t let her suffer.”
Nguyen died Aug. 14, at age 62, about three minutes after she was taken off the ventilator.
Fulton police not notified
Evans, whose dogs were seized by LifeLine, went to high school with Nguyen. They were friends, he said.
Evans owns two boxer mixes, Benjamin and Ruger. But in the months before Nguyen was attacked, he took in four more dogs.
Evans said his girlfriend had died, leaving a dog who had puppies, three adopted black-and-white terriers. The black lab, Arrow, was also a young stray that recently turned up, Evans said.
Nguyen often walked past Evans’ house, he said. Two days before the attack, she had stopped by and chatted for a while. All the dogs knew her, he said.
Evans thinks his dogs must have chased away whatever was attacking Nguyen on Aug. 1.
Four days after the attack, a LifeLine animal control officer went to Evans’ house and confiscated the terrier that escaped their truck, according to the incident report. Evans refused to surrender Ruger, so the officer placed the boxer mix on a home quarantine, the report said. He cited Evans for having dogs at large, and for “nuisance bite” although there was no evidence his dogs had bitten anyone, the report said.
The animal control officer later told Fulton County police that Kim, the LifeLine field manager, told him to cite Evans “but that he felt like it was not the right thing to do.”
The next day, Kim texted an animal control supervisor, saying Ruger needed to be confiscated because of the severity of Nguyen’s injuries.
“We don’t want to involve (Fulton County Police Animal Services Capt. Nicole) Dwyer unless we need to,” Kim texted, according to the 15-page incident report, which Dwyer ultimately wrote.
In a text to a different supervisor, Kim said LifeLine Operational Director Audrey Shoemaker didn’t want Fulton County police involved, according to the report.
Guinn denied that Kim ever met with Shoemaker or informed her of the severity of the case.
“Reason why we don`t wanna involve Dwyer is cause we don`t want it to go to social media and the news and blow up if the lady does pass and that we haven`t had custody of the last dog,” Kim texted a supervisor the next morning, according to Dwyer’s report.
That supervisor confiscated Ruger that day, according to the report.
The following week, Kim told a different supervisor to take Evans’ citations directly to court “because Fulton County Police were not going to be involved in the case,” the report said.
That day, the report said, LifeLine euthanized Evans’ three 9-month-old terriers and Arrow the black lab.
Guinn said Evans had surrendered the dogs to Fulton County, but they could not be released for adoption because they’d been seized in connection with a fatal attack.
“They were euthanized to protect the community,” Guinn told the AJC.
The day after that, Aug. 13, a LifeLine supervisor finally informed Dwyer about the mauling, the report said.
Dwyer called Kim to ask what she knew about it, according to the report. Kim said that she and her supervisor, Field Director Chris Emerson, were working on a file to send over.
In the report, Dwyer said she responded: “Two weeks after the fact?!”
When Dwyer saw the photos of Nguyen’s injuries, she called Fulton County Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division Chief Vernon Sawyer, who oversees the LifeLine contract. Sawyer said he hadn’t been notified about the incident either, according to the report.
Dwyer also called Yates, the county police chief, to loop him in. Shortly after that, Fox 5 posted a story online reporting Nguyen had been placed in palliative care.
Evans found out from the news story that his dogs had been euthanized. He said LifeLine never notified him.
Evans said his pets are the only family he has left.
“I miss my dogs,” he said. “I think about them every day.”
Evidence lost
LifeLine finally sent Dwyer its incident report on Aug. 14. The organization told county police the bodies of Evans’ dogs couldn’t be recovered.
That day, members of the Fulton County Manager’s team and the county police department met with Guinn, Shoemaker and Emerson to ask why LifeLine hadn’t notified them of the case sooner. Guinn said she’d just learned of the incident the day before. Shoemaker said she didn’t know how serious Nguyen’s injuries were.
Emerson said he “dropped the ball,” according to Dwyer’s report.
The Fulton County Medical Examiner’s office conducted an autopsy two days after Nguyen died. The depth of the animal bites couldn’t be measured for evidence because they’d been healing in the hospital for almost two weeks, according to Dwyer’s incident report.
Lakeside Drive was notorious for roaming dogs, according to residents and records. There were 20 calls to 911 about dogs on the street from November 2021 to January 2025, according to Dwyer’s report.
One caller reported nine loose dogs. At least one caller reported vicious dogs. In most cases, they were gone by the time animal control officers arrived, the report said.
The man who first called 911 when Nguyen was attacked told Dwyer that Evans’ dogs never bothered him, though one time they chased his motorcycle.
Neighbors have also reported coyotes in the area. Dwyer saw a possible coyote den about 10 yards from where Nguyen was attacked, according to the report. But a University of Georgia doctoral student who specializes in coyote behavior told Dwyer they usually run away from humans unless their young are nearby, and there would have been no pups around at that time of year.
A biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources “initially thought it could have possibly been a bear attack because of the unusual severity of her injuries,” the report said.
But a bear would have dragged Nguyen to a covered area and there hadn’t been bear sightings in the area, the biologist told Dwyer.
A week after Nguyen died, Dwyer learned from animal control officers about the group text during which Kim told supervisors not to involve her in the case. She obtained warrants to search Kim and Emerson’s work phones and found Kim’s text messages that she quoted in the incident report.
LifeLine fired Kim by early October, according to Dwyer’s report. Emerson was also fired for failing to follow protocol in the case, Guinn said.
Kim did not respond to messages seeking comment.
About two weeks after Nguyen’s death, the Union City Police Department fired Adkins, according to the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council. He had previously worked for the Clayton County Police Department for less than a year before being fired in February 2024, according to the POST report.
Adkins, the Union City Police Department spokesperson and the city’s police chief did not return messages seeking comment.
For about a month after Nguyen’s death, LifeLine stepped up patrols on Lakeside Drive, according to Dwyer’s incident report. Animal control officers caught a pregnant pit bull and a neighborhood dog named Scooby, the report said. An unnamed Union City police officer used a stun gun on Scooby “when it was not warranted,” the report said.
Scooby was euthanized “because of behavioral issues,” according to the report. The dog had belonged to neighbors who left him behind when they moved, said Evans, who helped take care of him. Evans said he’d never seen Scooby behave aggressively and he does not think the dog attacked Nguyen.
Ruger, the boxer mix, was returned to Evans, who was given leashes and a runner to ensure his two remaining dogs stay inside his fence, according to the incident report.
“Due to the Union City Police Department not collecting any evidence on scene or after along with the two week delay of LifeLine not telling Fulton County about the mauling, all possible DNA evidence was lost in this case,” the report said. “Because there is no DNA evidence and there were no witnesses to the mauling, I am unable to determine what dogs attacked Ms. Nguyen. I do not believe that Mr. Evans` dogs were the attackers because of no blood found on them and their friendly demeanor on scene.”
Bunn and Ingram said they don’t believe Evans’ dogs attacked Nguyen.
“That breaks my heart too,” Ingram said. “I’m a dog owner myself.”
Renewed scrutiny
Residents blasted LifeLine’s animal control division almost nine years ago, after 6-year-old Logan Braatz was mauled to death while walking to his southwest Atlanta school bus stop.
Logan’s mother, Angelica Braatz, sued LifeLine, saying neighbors had called many times about the dogs that killed him, but the organization failed to respond.
Braatz’s lawyer Joshua Stein and Guinn said the lawsuit was settled confidentially to both parties’ satisfaction.
At the news conference two months ago, Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts begged residents not to let their dogs roam.
“No matter what our police department does, they can only do so much,” he said.
Whatever did this to Nguyen is still out there, her neighbor, Matthew Lewis, told the commission days after the case was closed.
“We are scared for our animals,” he said. “We are scared for our people.”
Dwyer began serving this fall as the county’s interim field services director, Guinn said.
Through a county spokesperson, the Fulton County Police Department said last month the interview process for animal control officers would begin “in coming weeks.” Yates declined to be interviewed or answer written questions on the advice of the county attorney’s office. Dwyer did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Bunn said he isn’t sure if he wants to stay on Lakeside Drive. Thanksgiving and Christmas were Nguyen’s favorite times of the year, he said.
“It’s hard to go in that house,” Bunn said. “I miss her so much that it hurts me every day. It’s not fair, but I put it in God’s hands.”
— Data reporter Jennifer Peebles contributed to this article.
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