Kali­fa Clyne

The own­ers of the dogs which at­tacked and killed 46-year-old Denise Rack­al in Ch­agua­nas last Mon­day are re­ceiv­ing coun­selling to deal with the trau­ma aris­ing from the in­ci­dent. The son of the po­lice of­fi­cer who owned the pit bulls said yes­ter­day the fam­i­ly was re­morse­ful for what hap­pened. The son did not wish to be iden­ti­fied. He said his en­tire fam­i­ly is re­ceiv­ing coun­selling. He not­ed, too, that his fam­i­ly had reached out and per­son­al­ly ex­tend­ed their sym­pa­thy to Rack­al's rel­a­tives on Wednes­day night. He de­scribed the tragedy as a hor­ri­ble mis­take say­ing his moth­er had fall­en ill and was now ward­ed at hos­pi­tal aris­ing out of the stress­ful sit­u­a­tion.

When asked if the fam­i­ly had re­ceived an evic­tion no­tice from of­fi­cials of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC), the young man said no. "That is a mis­take be­ing re­port­ed, we have not been evict­ed," he said. Mean­while, the po­lice­man's neigh­bour, Alis­sa De Roche, in an in­ter­view out­side her home yes­ter­day, said she owns four pit bulls. She said she was un­sure whether the HDC would move to evict dog own­ers from the com­mu­ni­ty. De Roche said dogs like pit bulls and rot­tweil­ers are ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary in pro­tect­ing prop­er­ty in Ed­in­burgh 500. She said when her hus­band had just moved in, he was held up at gun­point and robbed.

She said be­cause of this the fam­i­ly felt it nec­es­sary to se­cure them­selves.

De Roche said if the HDC chose to evict dog own­ers they would have a lot of peo­ple to evict as most peo­ple along the street owned dogs. De Roche, who claims she breeds pit bulls at her Flam­buoy­ant Street home, said she did not be­lieve that all pit bulls should be la­belled as mon­sters be­cause of the act of her neigh­bour's dogs. "Pit bulls are good dogs. They are pro­tec­tors, but their be­hav­iour de­pends on how they are trained, tak­en care of and loved," she said. She said she has three chil­dren, the youngest a tod­dler, and she felt safe hav­ing her chil­dren in­ter­act with the an­i­mals. In fact, while De Roche was be­ing in­ter­viewed her young daugh­ter was in her arms and the pit bulls, two of which were pup­pies ran hap­pi­ly around her.