It’s not exactly the news you want to hear when you are out enjoying a nice summer day — your dogs just mauled a man and now he’s dead. Unfortunately, that’s exactly the situation actor Ving Rhames is dealing with this morning.
According to police, two dogs belonging to Rhames are suspected of having seriously injured the man who takes care of the actor’s home. Officers say they received a call yesterday morning by someone who said a dead body was on the front lawn of Rhames’ Brentwood home. When police responded they say they found the body of a 40-year-old African-American male who had sustained numerous bites and scratches, which appeared to be dog bites.
Officers say they removed four dogs (three mastiffs and one English bulldog), which they described as “the size of lions” from Rhames’ property. Currently, police are waiting for the results of an autopsy before they announce an exact cause of death. Police are being careful not to say that the dog bites are the exact cause of death since they don’t have any solid evidence that makes them 100% sure that is the case.
“It’s premature to say how he died,” police told reporters. “We don’t know if he was attacked by the dogs and suffered a heart attack.”
Meanwhile, the dogs in question (two of which have been identified as belonging to Rhames) have been taken to an animal shelter where they are being examined for traces of blood. Police say other dogs were also on the property but had not been taken into custody.
According to police, the victim lived on Rhames’ property and worked as a caretaker at the home and was also responsible for caring for the dogs. Officers are calling the incident “a tragic death” and the scene “bloody.”
As I mentioned earlier, Rhames, who appeared in the “Mission Impossible” series, was not home at the time of the attack, but in a TIME magazine interview completed in 2001 he said he was the proud owner of “eight Fila Brasileiro mastiffs – the national dog of Brazil, also used by U.S. Marines in jungle warfare.”
I can’t imagine how the actor reacted when he learned his prize dogs are now being accused of killing the man who took care of them.
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