“It’s a miracle I’m alive.” Antonio Francone knows he was luckyeven if his face full of stitches would suggest otherwise. He says it several times, while with a voice broken by tears he recounts those interminable minutes under the clutches of that furious dog who tried to bite his neck and kill him.
«Just a few weeks ago – he says emotionally – in our city a man who was fishing lost the use of one arm due to an attack by a rottweiler. He only saved himself by throwing himself into the sea. For this reason, despite everything, I believe I was lucky.”
On the afternoon of December 31st, like every day, he went for a walk with his dog on a plot of land owned by his family, in the Ciambra district of Palmi. And right in front of the gate of his property he was attacked by a pit bull left free to roam the area. «Around 4.30pm – says Antonio Francone – I parked in front of the gate of my house and went in with my dog Leri, who is 14 years old and deaf and blind. The area around the house is completely fenced and only when I’m inside do I let my dog free, even though he is very old and sick.”
After just over an hour, the 45-year-old decided to return home where his family was waiting for him to celebrate the last day of the year. He had no idea, of course, what awaited him beyond that gate.
«Around 5.30pm I decided to go home. Suddenly I realize that dog that was hiding behind my car parked on the street. It was a brown pit bull who, as soon as he saw me, lowered himself to his paws and jumped on my neck. I instinctively put my hands forward. He then started biting my hand, my ear, his incisor got stuck in my nose.” The fight begins, you learn, with the pitbull. Minutes that seemed like an eternity to Francone. «We were on the ground – he adds – we started rolling, I thought I fought for at least 10 minutes. The dog kept biting me and dragging me. During those minutes I saw a boy approaching, he was the owner of the dog who I begged several times to help me, but he didn’t. In fact, as soon as he realized that someone was coming in a car he ran away.”
Francone clings to that last hope, to those headlights that cut through the darkness of the evening. «From the car – explains Antonio in tears – a man I didn’t know, Carlo Manule, got out, whom I just had time to see before fainting, while the pitbull was still trying to get to my neck. Carlo took a cable and wrapped it around the dog’s neck, managing to get it off me and tie it a little further away.” Antonio Francone is aware of the fact that he owes his life to that man: «He saved me with his courage and ability to face a difficult situation. I no longer had the strength to fight. He told me later that when he arrived I was helpless and the dog picked me up and slammed me to the ground.”
Francone praises not only Manule’s courage, but also his humanity. «He caressed my face, picked me up like a child and carried me into the house. After me he did the same with my dog who was injured in the thigh. Immediately afterwards he called 118 and the Carabinieri.”
The ambulance took Antonio to the Gioia Tauro hospital, «where they stitched me up, reattached my ear and then sent me to Polistena for further tests. They told me that I will have to undergo treatment in a hyperbaric chamber because I risk gangrene in a finger.” Naturally, he reported what happened to the local police, but perhaps what happened to him could have been avoided.
«A few months ago – he concluded – a man from Palmi had filed a complaint to report the danger of this dog wandering alone in the area. And a woman also risked being attacked a few days before me.”
