Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Rel­a­tives of preg­nant moth­er Kurleen Coop­er are pray­ing for the safe­ty of her un­born child who faces life- threat­en­ing com­pli­ca­tions. Coop­er suf­fered a dog at­tack on Tues­day. She re­mained ward­ed yes­ter­day in a se­ri­ous con­di­tion at the High De­pen­den­cy Unit of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Speak­ing at the hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day, Coop­er's broth­er, James, said even though doc­tors made a skin graft on her right arm, in try­ing to save it, she was still ex­pe­ri­enc­ing ex­cru­ci­at­ing pain. "She can­not move her fin­gers and she is in a lot of pain," James added. He said Coop­er's ba­by was al­so in dan­ger be­cause of the heavy anaes­thet­ics she got dur­ing her surgery.

"We are just pray­ing she re­cov­ers and the ba­by sur­vives," James said. Mean­while, the dogs which were blamed for the at­tack, re­mained chained to the back of the own­er's home at South Cen­tral Road, Point Fortin. The dogs could be heard bark­ing loud­ly from the back of the busi­ness­man's un­fenced house. A work­er said the own­er was in Port-of-Spain and had re­quest­ed no me­dia en­tered his yard.

"My boss got robbed five or six times. He keeps the dogs here as pro­tec­tion. These dogs are pets, They not vi­cious," the work­er added. He de­nied the dogs at­tacked Coop­er. "I was not here but I heard that it is some­body else dogs that bite her up," he said.

How­ev­er, an­gry neigh­bours de­nied the claim, say­ing the busi­ness­man's dogs were re­spon­si­ble for sev­er­al at­tacks over the past few months. Reg­gae singer De­von Samuels, al­so known as Prophet Ben­jamin, said: "I don't care who is vexed with me. This is not the first time that the dogs at­tack peo­ple. "No­body can pass on that road with­out the dogs 'rush­ing' them. My son had to run and leave his slip­pers."

Say­ing Coop­er must be prop­er­ly com­pen­sat­ed, Samuel said the dogs must be re­moved im­me­di­ate­ly from the own­er's cus­tody. "I un­der­stand rob­bers hold him up sev­er­al times and he has to keep dogs for pro­tec­tion but he has to fence his yard be­cause in­no­cent peo­ple get­ting at­tacked," Samuels said.

Coop­er's best friend, Kizzy Richard­son, said Coop­er was look­ing for­ward to her new ba­by. She added: "All she want­ed was to have a healthy child. When I saw her she was not look­ing well and we are all pray­ing for her and the ba­by." She al­so said the neigh­bour's dogs were vi­cious and ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment they were not tak­en away.

Point Fortin MP Paula Gopee-Scoon vis­it­ed Coop­er at hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day and spoke with rel­a­tives. Po­lice said they were con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the in­ci­dent but de­clined to say whether any charges would be laid.