Dog beaten with baseball bat, cut with knife - Roanoke, VA

Tuesday, Oct 12, 1999

Linga, a year old blue Doberman pinscher, disappeared Oct 12 from the yard of Mousatfa El-Attar, president of the newly formed Mountain View Neighborhood Watch. When a neighbor found her on a Friday, Linga was covered with cuts and bruises.

"The dog was real weak and could barely walk," said Roger Beatty, who came face-to-face with Linga when he walked into his backyard. "She had what looked like a bullet wound in her shoulder. She was definitely beaten."

Linga escaped from El-Attar's yard in the 1600 block of Chapman Avenue Southwest days after he was elected president of the new neighborhood group. El-Attar and other residents along Chapman Avenue were harassed by people in the neighborhood after their efforts to clean up the street were publicized in The Roanoke Times. Because the fence in his yard had been pulled down and the gate left open, El-Attar believes Linga's escape wasn't by accident.

El-Attar didn't expect to ever see Linga again.

"I'm so glad I found her," El-Attar said Tuesday from his front yard, where Linga was limping around and alternately wagging her tail and barking at passersby. "I think she'll be OK."

El-Attar doesn't know who took Linga, or exactly what happened to her. She had a deep gash on her head and a circular, raw wound on her left shoulder. Other cuts and bruises covered her sleek body, which shook slightly whenever someone petted her. Though she could have been hit by a car, El-Attar said he was told by a veterinarian that Linga likely was cut by a knife and beaten with a baseball bat.

After finding the dog, Beatty, 34, and his girlfriend, Audrey Fitzgerald, 22, tried to reach animal control officers without luck, he said. So on Saturday, he told his friend Wanda Tice about his find.

Tice happens to be vice president of the neighborhood watch. "I asked, 'What kind of dog?'" Tice said Tuesday. "Then I went running all the way down to Mousatfa's to tell him."

Both Tice and El-Attar said recent events haven't deterred them from their fight to turn their neighborhood around. Both have been threatened, and El-Attar and his wife had had rocks thrown at their home and vehicles. Still, residents continue to join the new neighborhood watch, which meets again Thursday night at the West End United Methodist Church.

References

• Roanoke VA Times - Oct 20, 1999

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