‘Tried to eat me alive’: Dogs brutally maul TX woman after leaping fence, family says
.png "A Texas woman was mauled by four dogs in her fenced-in yard, her family says.")
A Texas woman is recovering after she says she was attacked by four dogs in her fenced-in yard.
Kristi Burrell was in her front yard in Katy when four dogs jumped the fence and attacked her Sept. 19, she told KHOU.
“They started biting my legs and I was screaming, and I was thrashing and hitting and trying to stop them,” she told the news outlet. “And that’s when I felt them grab my head, and they started pulling me apart like tug-of-war ... and I could feel them ripping my scalp off.”
Burrell was familiar with the dogs, and even gave them “pats and hugs” before, her dad said in a GoFundMe page.
But, the dogs “viciously” attacked her as she fought back, he said.
“As they continued their attack, she tried to curl into a ball to protect her face and vitals. Several of them then started in on her back and arms while one commenced ripping into the top of her head, almost tearing her scalp completely off,” he said in the GoFundMe page.
As Burrell was being mauled, her neighbors intervened and came to her rescue.
“A woman jumped over the fence and covered me with her body to protect me,” Burrell told KPRC. “They must have been courageous. I don’t know if I would have been that courageous.”
Another neighbor shot two of the dogs, killing them and ending the attack, according to the outlet.
The other two dogs were euthanized, the Waller County Sheriff’s Office told KHOU.
“When we first talked on the phone while crying, she says to me, ‘Daddy, they tore me up. They tore me up really bad,’ and when I first got here, through the tears she said, ‘THEY TRIED TO EAT ME ALIVE,’” Burrell’s dad wrote in the GoFundMe page.
Burrell was flown to a hospital for “life-saving intervention,” KHOU reported.
“My daughter received bites and tears over the majority of her body, severing through muscle and ligaments all the way to the bone in several areas. They had to shave her head completely to try and piece together what was left of her head and scalp and install a tube to drain fluid buildup,” the GoFundMe page said.
Burrell is now home with bandages covering her body after multiple surgeries, KPRC reported. She told the outlet she has trouble sleeping and often wakes up panicked.
The dogs’ owner is facing eight citations of failure to restrain and failure to provide proof of rabies vaccinations, KHOU reported.
Katy is part of the Houston metropolitan area.
This story was originally published September 24, 2025 at 1:06 PM with the headline "‘Tried to eat me alive’: Dogs brutally maul TX woman after leaping fence, family says."
