The Franklin County Sheriff's Office charged Brandy Dowdy with manslaughter and with violating Alabama's dangerous dog law.
FRANKLIN COUNTY, Ala. (WTVA) — Law enforcement say they arrested a woman after her dogs attacked and killed a state employee following up on a dog attack earlier in the week.
The Franklin County Sheriff's Office charged 39-year-old Brandy Dowdy with manslaughter and with violating Alabama's dangerous dog law.
Sheriff Shannon Oliver says deputies on Friday saw several dogs attacking people on Crumpton Road south of Red Bay, which led to some dogs being euthanized immediately by community members.
Deputies were originally there to investigate a suspicious vehicle, and it was during that investigation they found the body of 58-year-old Jacqueline Beard, an employee with the Alabama Department of Public Health.
Someone was trapped inside the "suspicious" vehicle by some of the same dogs believed to be responsible for an attack that happened Thursday (April 28, 2022) and sent a woman to University Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi, with serious injuries.
The dogs allegedly turned on a few neighbors trying to help the man out of his car, which led them to put the dogs down.
It was after that when the deputies responding to the suspicious vehicle call found Beard's body.
Oliver says Beard was there to follow up on the Thursday attack.
The sheriff believes the dogs attacked and killed Beard as she tried contacting their owner.
Sheriff Oliver told WTVA that community members made the decision to euthanize the rest of the dogs responsible for the Thursday and Friday attacks after Beard was killed.
He also said the Franklin County Sheriff's Department believes that the dogs responsible for both day's attacks are now dead.
Emily's Law, the dangerous dog law allegedly violated by Dowdy, allows for felony charges to be filed if an owner's dog or dogs violently attack and injure, or kill, someone, and the owner is aware of the dogs violent past tendencies.
The law was created in 2018, in memory of 24-year-old Emily Colvin, who was attacked and killed by a pack of dogs in the front yard of her Jackson County home in December 2017.
