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If the dog comes from a certain neighborhood in the far Outer Sunset, it will almost certainly die.
The neighborhood of single-family homes and surfer shanties surrounding the corner of 46th Avenue and Judah, near Ocean Beach, where the N Judah line ends and the Pacific Ocean begins, is home to a group of young drug dealers and pit-bull fighters who call themselves the 46th Avenue Mob. Or Forty-Sixers, for short. " 'Pho-Sixers' is how they pronounce it," says Judy McGaffey, whose cat was eaten by a Forty-Sixer pit bull last year.
McGaffey, a marketing executive and all-around dog person, is an animal lover amid animal abusers. She's a top-notch human among low-rent jerks.
Last year, a family nearby moved out of the neighborhood and decided to simply leave their dogs and cats behind. There were about 10 felines.
One of them, Orph, a slip of a cat stunted by too many early pregnancies, inexplicably took to McGaffey. McGaffey would always say "hi" to Orph -- short for Orphan -- when she'd pass her in the street.
"She'd nuzzle my nose with her nose," McGaffey says. "The neighbors would see us and say it's true love."
Pretty soon, McGaffey was leaving her garage door open a crack, so Orph could find refuge. Orph's siblings, Patches and Boots, came along. Then, McGaffey began leaving food on the driveway. Shortly thereafter, she made up cat beds and moved the dishes into the house.
A few months later, Patches had kittens in the house where she used to live, and, with fierce motherly pride, carried them three at a time over several backyard fences until they were safely ensconced in an open suitcase in McGaffey's garage. "We set out a bed for her and her kittens," says McGaffey. "But she was adamant about that suitcase."
The cats got along fine with McGaffey's two Labradors; the newly enlarged household was happy until two Pho-Sixer punks intervened.
It took San Francisco Police Officer Ronald Gehrke of Taraval Station one week to persuade terrified witnesses to tell him what had happened on April 25, 1996, at 20 minutes until 8 o'clock in the evening.
Once the witnesses agreed to speak, this is what Officer Gehrke learned:
There were two of them -- William Donald Ross, aka Junior, 15 years old, 5 feet nothing, 100 pounds, sporting a huge 'fro and wearing a beanie studded with rhinestones and a 49er jacket; and 21-year-old Amro Mohammed Ibrahim, aka Michael Mohammed, aka Emerald, 5 foot 11 and 250 pounds. They were walking Ibrahim's pit bull down 46th Avenue near McGaffey's house.
Orph was lying on the porch recovering from a recent, trying, birth. The pit chased, caught, and killed small, tired Orph. There are varying accounts of how the attack started. One neighbor told McGaffey that Junior and Emerald sicced the dog on the cat. Some witnesses told Officer Gehrke that Ross tried to call the dog off. Gehrke's report says nothing about the dog's owner, Ibrahim, doing anything to avert the killing.
The attack lasted more than five minutes. The results were, to say the least, horrifying. Afterward, most of the cat was simply gone.
"Neighbors recall the suspects training the dog to attack stuffed animals," Gehrke wrote in his report.
The neighborhood around Judah and 46th had been terrorized by gang creeps and their killer dogs for a long time before Orph was torn limb from limb. Pho-Sixer pits had attacked neighbors or their animals on several occasions, the residents told Gehrke. And Capt. Guldbech believes that area gang members own at least 15 pit bulls.
However many dogs they own, the Pho-Sixers appear to be brazen about their blood lust. One evening in July 1995, they took over a children's playground in Golden Gate Park and turned it into a fight ring. Officer Lawrence Ramlan was dispatched to the park and found Ibrahim, Ross, and several others watching Ibrahim's dog fight another pit bull. Ross was holding a 2-month-old pit pup on his lap. One of the onlookers yelled, "Cop!" The crowd scattered. Ibrahim grabbed his dog and dove into the bushes, but officers nabbed him and his bleeding, limping pit a few blocks away. Ross was picked up later. Ibrahim was cited for dogfighting. Junior was admonished; his dad had to come pick him up.
Two months later, Ibrahim and about 10 of his cohorts postured again, only more audaciously. This time, Ibrahim helped stage a dogfight in the middle of the street, right at the intersection of 46th Avenue and Judah, where everyone could see and get the not-so-subtle message: We rule this place. Stay out of our way.
The cops begged to differ, arresting Ibrahim and one James Odin Sullivan.
That winter, Ross and another little banger named Sergio Crockett, a 15-year-old who looked 12, were busted for fighting dogs at a house on the 3700 block of Ortega Street. Animal Care and Control reports show that the same dogs had been fought on three previous occasions. But Animal Control had to return the dogs to the owners. There was no way to prove the fights had been planned.
Three months later, Crockett's dogfighting career was cut short when he was stabbed more than 50 times, trussed up with electrical cord, wrapped in a blanket, and thrown from a car. Police believe he was going to collect on a drug debt the creditor was unwilling to pay.
Crockett was mourned and buried, and things went on pretty much as usual out where the street turns to sea and sand and fog.
Two months later, Orph was devoured. Then, in August, Lina Jiang was putting wash on a line at her Oceanview home and her 3-year-old toddler, little Danny Chu, was watching. Ross' dog -- the one that Animal Control had to return -- jumped the fence and chewed up the toddler's face.
