‘Just tell me if my daughter’s alive.’ After near fatal dog attack, family wants changes
Drew Russell could barely understand her daughter’s friend on the phone that day. The panicked girl tried to relay that her only child, Avery Russell, had been bitten by dogs.
The 11-year-old girl passed the phone to a neighbor, a man with little information about the chaotic scene. He handed the phone to Reynoldsburg, Ohio, Police Officer Nicholas Lewis.
“Just tell me if my daughter’s alive,” Drew said.
“I can’t tell you that,” Lewis told her. Then he added: “Don’t come here. Meet us at Children’s.”
Drew flew down I-70, hitting 120 miles an hour and praying a cop would pull her over and take her to Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
Avery is her everything. A sweet, smart and loving 11-year-old girl with a knack for computer coding and math.
By the time Drew ran into the trauma bay, teams of nurses, doctors and paramedics swarmed her child. A chaplain, Rev. Kelsie Meyers, stepped in front of Drew. The look on Meyers’ face told Drew that it was bad. Real bad.
“No one had told me anything. So, I still had no idea the severity of the situation,” Drew said. “Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.”
Two pit bulls, Apollo and Layla, chewed off most of Avery’s ears, ripped into her nose, left a huge gouge above her left eye and punctured her forehead and shoulder. Her face looked like ground hamburger.
“My reaction was like, ‘Oh, my God. That’s not my child!'” Drew recalled. “I was fully in shock. I could never have fathomed that that call would lead to that.”
Avery’s left eye was swollen shut, so Drew leaned in close to her right side. She wanted Avery to know she was with her.
“If you can hear mommy’s voice, squeeze my hand,” Drew told her 11-year-old, fighting for her life.
Avery gave her mom’s hand a little squeeze.
Before surgeons began what would be a nine-hour operation, putting Avery’s face back together like a jigsaw puzzle, Drew pleaded with them:
“Just save my daughter. Just save her. Save her. Just please save her and bring my baby back to me.”
