Stray Dog Terrorizes Beijing East-End Neighborhood

Beijing residents of an east-end Beijing neighborhood have taken to arming themselves with sticks after a stray dog attacked eight people early this week, the youngest being a three-year-old child.

After the incident, police reminded the public to stay vigilant after a barrage of attacks happened in the Runfengshang and Huafangyicheng neighborhoods, located near Qingnian Road Station on Beijing Metro Line 6 (just a few stations away from Hujialou Station).

The most serious injuries were received by a five-year-old child with bites to his face and legs (shown above), resulting in medical bills described by family members as reaching RMB 100,000.

Eyewitnesses say the attacks were made by a small, yellow-colored dog around 60 centimeters in length, leading to speculation that they were all made by the same animal. Due to its dirty appearance, authorities further describe the dog as a stray.

Chaoyang police confirmed on their official Weibo account that a yellow-colored dog fitting the description of the attacking animal was captured near Qingnian Road. No word yet as whether the dog is sick with rabies.

Prior to capturing the culprit dog, police have taken in 10 stray dogs since the attacks began, but none of them matched the description of the attacking dog. A posse of some 30 people managed to sporadically track down the dog, but have not been successful in neutralizing the public safety threat.

While the dog was still at large, area residents have taken to arming themselves with crude weapons like tree branches and umbrellas in order to protect their families. One local resident told media outlet Heavy Crimes Unit #37, "Usually only one person comes to pick up the child from kindergarten, but today, there's two, and we've brought a walking stick to protect ourselves."

Although their domesticated peers have become popular among affluent middle-class residents, stray dogs are the main culprit responsible for transmitting rabies in China, giving it the second-highest number of reported rabies cases in the world. Currently, 2,000 people die each year from rabies across China, an improvement from 30 years ago when the rate was over 5,000 annually.

In Beijing alone, 27 rabies victims died from non-vaccinated dog bites between 2014 and 2016, according to Beijing Ditan Hospital.

However, even as the rabies threat diminishes, dog bites remain a prevalent danger to the Beijing public. This past Chinese New Year celebrating the Year of the Dog, 3,333 dog bite cases were recorded in Beijing.

According to the reports, none of the victims are said to have contracted rabies.

There are an estimated 2 million dogs in Beijing, both registered and unregistered.

Images: NetEase (163.com)

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