Mauling sends Newark 8-year-old on journey to save her arm
Don't fool with Frank. That's what 8-year-old Emily Ruckle's father had told her repeatedly about the pit bull that moved into the family's Newark home two months earlier with her teenage brother, Jack.
But after opening the back door to allow the family's German shepherd to go out, Emily and her 15-year-old sister, Megan, also opened the door for Frank.
The girls had their backs to the dog when it lunged at Emily. At first, Megan thought Frank was just playing and urged her sister to drop whatever toy of Frank's she was holding. But Emily's hands were empty.
As Frank violently shook Emily by her right arm, he slammed the 59-pound girl's head against a column, showering the room with blood. Megan began to panic.
"I just kept trying to pull him off," Megan recalled.
But the 100-pound pit bull would not yield. She didn't want to leave her sister, but Megan knew that if she didn't get help, Emily could die.
Megan raced upstairs and punched 911 into the phone. She breathlessly relayed to the dispatcher that Emily was being attacked by a dog.
"I don't know what to do," she screamed into the receiver at 1:02 p.m. "He won't stop. He won't stop."
Inconsolable, Megan answered questions as best she could, repeating between answers, "Oh my God, oh my God. She's so bloody. He's still attacking her."
The 911 tape reveals that the dispatcher quickly secured critical information — that Emily was 8, that Megan was Emily's sister, not her mother, that the parents were not home and that Emily remained conscious.
"He's got her arm in his mouth, and he will not let go," Megan moaned. "He's jerking her around like a rag doll."
Before Megan rushed back downstairs, she implored emergency responders to hurry, explaining that the attack took place in the basement of the home and that the door to the outside remained open.
"He's trying to gnaw her arm off," she wailed. "It's like not even attached anymore."
Megan left the phone on as she hurried back downstairs, so the 911 call continued to be recorded. She grabbed dog treats and threw them at the pit bull, but the dog ignored the hard biscuits.
Megan wrapped her arms around her little sister's neck to protect it from the dog's powerful jaws.
"I got you, Emily," the call records Megan telling her sister. "I know. I'm sorry. Oh my God, please, please hurry!"
When Frank finally released his grip on the girl, the pit bull backed away about a foot and calmly began cleaning Emily’s blood off his coat. Megan was terrified to move, worried the dog would attack again.
She heard police upstairs and began screaming, "We're down here! We're down here!"
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Outside, Cpl. Andrew Pagnotti had his stun gun pointed on Kona, the family's black German shepherd, thinking it was the dog that attacked Emily. Once fellow officers explained the dog that attacked was in the basement, configured like a maze with two bedrooms and a game room, Pagnotti left the German shepherd and headed for the girls.
Officers Daniel Burgess and Cpl. Truman Bolden stood at the top of the basement steps looking down at the growling pit bull — so covered with blood officers couldn't tell he had brown spots. It had been 18 minutes since Megan made the 911 call, and Frank backed deeper into the basement, out of sight.
Burgess unholstered his gun, and Bolden readied his stun gun. When the dog reappeared, Bolden fired the stun gun.
Frank fell to the ground, and then pulled out one of the stun gun barbs. He moved toward the girls again.
The officers ordered the girls out of Jack's room, where the dog was kept. Megan snatched up Emily and carried her into an adjacent bedroom. Emily started vomiting.
Pagnotti could see the girls through a small window, and momentarily considered getting an EMS officer through it before determining the opening was too small. He told Megan to pick up Emily and carry her to the other side of the basement and up a spiral staircase.
Megan did so and handed Emily to Pagnotti at the top of the stairs, who rushed her to a stretcher.
"I noticed Ruckle had a severe open fracture of her right upper arm with the bone protruding out of the open wound," Pagnotti wrote in his report of the incident.
Both girls were so drenched in blood — the ends of Megan’s hair were stained pink — that EMS officers initially thought Megan also had been attacked.
Veteran EMS officer Paul Bazzoli — who has seen a body burned head to toe and a decapitation — was stunned by the savagery.
"I've never seen a little girl mauled like that in my 25-year career," Bazzoli said.
Officers spread a sheet on the ambulance’s passenger seat for Megan. The ambulance began rolling toward A.I. duPont Hospital for Children in Rockland at 1:29 p.m. — 27 minutes after Megan’s call.
"It didn’t hit me until we were in the ambulance," Megan said. "Then I just started sobbing."
EMS officer Brian Warrick started an IV in Emily's left arm to pump fluids into her body and keep her blood flowing. On her right side, the humerus, a bone that runs from the shoulder socket to the elbow, was snapped clean at the shoulder. The muscles and tendons were separated in a way that reminded Bazzoli of the way a butcher shaves meat off a bone.
Bazzoli covered Emily's arm with gauze pads, which he had to change twice during the 12-minute ride to the hospital. But he had to be careful not to use too much pressure because if the blood clotted, it would kill tissue. And he was mindful not to move the connective tissue and muscle because that could unintentionally severe an artery or vein feeding the arm.
The short ride to the hospital felt like it took as long as a 90-minute drive to the beach, Warrick said. After transferring Emily to the emergency room, the officers said that in frustration and horror, they literally pounded their heads against stone pillars at the hospital.
Then they cried.
"I have five years left, and I never want to see that again," Bazzoli said.
"It’s a child," Warrick added. "They’re innocent. They are pure. They don’t hate. And to see them damaged is pretty emotionally traumatizing."
Emily's parents, Todd and Maria Ruckle, both real estate agents, had had a busy day — starting with a listing appointment at 8:30 a.m., then a morning housewarming party, and finally a wedding at Minquadale Fire Company's Memorial Hall. During the ceremony, they were being good wedding guests, ignoring their cellphones.
Todd, a big guy with an even bigger personality, and Maria, pint-sized and curvy, have been married since 2005. Within a month, Maria was pregnant with Emily, who was born June 29, 2006.
Both had children from previous relationships. Todd had a son, while Maria had Megan and Jack. Jack had moved in with the Ruckles two months before, bringing Frank. The dog belonged to Jack's father, who had moved out of state, and Jack asked if he could bring the dog when he moved in with the family.
That Saturday, Jack worked his construction job, so Megan and Emily were left home with the dogs. Even seven years apart, the girls were close and often went on walks. Together, they presented a vision of sisterliness: Megan and her long blonde locks towering over Emily, with shoulder-length brown hair.
Before heading out that morning, Todd, a Newark city councilman, told Emily, "Love you. I hope you have a good day.”
The girls decided to walk to the Newark Goodwill store, where Megan bought what she calls an "old lady" painting of a sculptor at work, then stopped at McDonald's for milkshakes before heading home.
They were out when Todd and Maria came home to change for the wedding. Todd slipped into a black tux and shiny shoes, while Maria donned a below-the-knee black and red sparkly cocktail dress.
Todd's iPhone 4S had been acting strange, which he assumed stemmed from a recent software update. It kept short-circuiting and finally froze with a picture of Emily's face on the screen.
At the wedding, Maria kept clicking ignore when her phone wouldn't stop ringing. As a real estate agent, she was used to handling calls that way.
As the bridal party was making its way down the aisle, a text popped up from the handyman hired to stain their deck that day.
"Urgent,” it said. “Can't get down street. Fire and EMS. Your house is a crime scene. Get here."
Todd and Maria jumped up just as the bride appeared. Todd answered the next call. It was from the hospital. A woman told him that his daughter had been attacked by a dog.
"You need to get here right now," she said.
"Is she alive?" Todd asked.
There was a pause. The lady let out a sigh and said, “You need to get here."
With her peach shorts and blonde hair soaked in blood, Megan elicited jaw-dropping stares in the emergency department.
Staff gave her a set of scrubs to change into. A therapist tried to talk to her, but Megan didn’t want to talk. She sat in silence.
Todd and Maria finally walked in.
When Maria saw Megan, she screamed in an accusatory voice, "How could this happen?"
Nearly two years later, while doing interviews for this story, Emily makes a face.
"Wait, you yelled at her?" she playfully asks her mother. "Why? You're mean."
"Emily, you have no idea how bad it was," Maria popped back.
Maria acknowledged that it was the "worst mom moment" ever. "I flew off the handle."
When Todd and Maria first heard Emily had been attacked by a dog, they assumed it was a stranger's dog, not Frank.
Maria and Todd weren’t really happy about the pit bull being in their home, but Jack was attached to the dog, which almost died before moving in.
Maria, a former veterinary technician, saved Frank from heat exhaustion by dabbing rubbing alcohol on his paw pads after her son called distraught, saying the dog was sick.
Todd had never liked the dog, partly because it was untrained. The family agreement was that Jack would take care of the dog and it would live in Jack's room.
Todd repeatedly warned the girls to stay away from Frank. The dog had never been overly aggressive, Jack told police that day.
"We brought a time bomb into that house," Todd now says. "It was 100 percent preventable, and that’s what irritates the living hell out of me."
After Megan and Emily had escaped, police officers Bolden and Burgess tried to locate and corral Frank, who was running through the basement. They requested and received permission from their shift manager to use deadly force.
When they realized there was a second staircase to the basement, Bolden went to find it. After coming down those stairs, he walked through a number of rooms and doors in the "maze-like" basement back toward Burgess, who now understood the dog was in the back room where the girls were attacked.
Burgess was able to tell Bolden he would find the dog in the next room to his left.
"I fired one shot and the dog began growling and barking," Bolden said in his report. "I fired again as the dog moved to the center of the room. I fired a third time, at which point the dog retreated into a closet. I then fired twice more before the dog was completely neutralized."
It was 1:28 p.m. The girls were in the ambulance about to leave for the hospital.
Todd acknowledges he was happy to hear Frank was dead.
"That was the only peace of mind that I knew," Todd said, "that the thing that (nearly) killed my daughter is already dead."
The police would later rule the attack an accident.
The Ruckles spent only 10 minutes at A.I., most of it a blur signing papers. They had about three minutes with their daughter, who was covered in blood, her skin turning yellow. Emily was being prepped for a flight to Philadelphia.
Pagnotti, of the Newark Police Department, filed a report. In it, he explained A.I. staff "advised that due to the extent of Ruckle's injuries, she was to be airlifted to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. They characterized the injuries as serious and explained that Ruckle would need vascular surgery in order to have a chance of preserving her right arm."
Todd and Maria watched as their little girl was loaded into a helicopter, blades pushing wind across the pad.
Maria wanted to go with Emily, but there was no room in the helicopter. She asked if Emily was going to survive the ride.
No one could answer her.
As the helicopter rose into the air, Maria’s legs gave way, and she collapsed to the ground.
SPECIAL REPORT: SAVING EMILY'S ARM
PART 1: THE ATTACK
PART 2: THE HOSPITAL
PART 3: THE FINAL SURGERY
Contact Jen Rini at (302) 324-2386 or jrini@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter at @jenrini.