SAN ANTONIO – Raymond Najera, the son of a man killed in an aggressive dog attack last month, spoke to the Animal Care Services Advisory Board during a meeting Wednesday evening.
Najera lost his father on Feb. 24, and his mother was hurt during the attack. He now says it’s on ACS to do better to avoid more attacks.
Najera said what happened to his father, 81-year-old Ramon Najera, was preventable and a failure of a fragmented system with city services.
According to a memo from San Antonio city manager Eric Walsh, there were 114 calls to 911 and 42 calls to 311 about the home where the dogs lived.
Raymon Najera said the attack on his father proves that different city departments must work together to prevent this from happening to anyone else.
“‘See something, say something.’ They did. I talked to the residents. I spoke to them, and I was astonished of all the calls they made to these people, about these people, and then nothing happened,” he said.
Raymond Najera says he supports a new piece of legislation, House Bill 4759, which allows for anonymous reporting of aggressive dogs to prevent retaliation. At Wednesday night’s meeting, he asked everyone to call their representatives to support the bill.
ACS officials also presented their strategic plan to the city council Wednesday. Part of that presentation focused on ACS’s aggressive dog investigators and making sure there are more of them to handle their caseload.
The ACS advisory board will meet again in May to further discuss this plan.