Pit bull shot dead after killing dog, injuring 17-year-old Angela Tye in Fort Pierce

FORT PIERCE — A 17-year-old girl was injured and a family's small dog was killed in a pit bull attack that ended with an unknown person fatally shooting the unleashed terrier.

Angela Tye injured her hand punching the pit bull, which had leaped up and locked its jaws around the neck of a dog she was holding over her head to protect it, her mother, Carolyn Hall, said Wednesday.

Tye and her 18-year-old sister, Onicesha Burks, were taking their mother's dog — a 3-year-old female named Oreanna — on a nightly walk on 29th Street, north of Orange Avenue, at about 8 p.m. Saturday.

An unknown person came up and fired a bullet into pit bull's back, killing it instantly, the report said.

When police arrived, Onicesha was holding Oreanna in her arms.

Investigators talked with the pit bull's caretaker, who police quoted as saying she was not home at the time of the attack but had left the dog chained when she left home at 4 p.m.

Witnesses said the dog ran through an open gate and went after Hall's dog, which her son had given her when it was 4 weeks old. Because the dog was black, they named it after the Oreo cookie and added Anna to the end because it was female.

The family, including her husband, Clayton, and their grandchildren buried Oreanna in Hall's backyard. "I don't want to talk about it," she said.

"When I pick up the grandchildren, who are 3 and 4 years old, they ask what happened to Oreanna," Hall said. "They ask why they don't see her anymore. She was one of the family."