ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — St. Petersburg police are piecing together what happened Wednesday night after crews located a bleeding 52-year-old man on a South Side roadway with an aggressive dog blocking help.
A call about 8:17 p.m. drew officers onto Quincy Street South near the 2500 block. They found the man in the street with a medium pit bull-mix on a leash beside him and a large amount of blood around the scene.
Rescue workers could not reach him at first. Police said the animal grew more agitated, then started biting the victim. Roughly nine minutes after the first response, an officer fired and killed the dog so medics could move in. The man was pronounced dead where he lay.
Early autopsy notes shared by the St. Petersburg Police Department describe severe bite wounds to the neck and shoulder as life-threatening. Investigators say they have not found other signs that someone else attacked him. The Pinellas County Medical Examiner’s Office will make the final ruling on cause.
Detectives later confirmed the dog was the man’s own pet. Department spokesperson Yolanda Fernandez said officers saw how badly he was hurt and how unresponsive he looked, and that removing the dog was the only way crews could try to help.
Neighbors on the quiet residential stretch of Quincy often see evening traffic heading toward downtown and the bay, but Wednesday’s call was far from routine. Officers treated the scene as a suspicious-death investigation while waiting on the medical examiner’s full report.
His name has not been released. Detectives remain focused on what put him in the roadway before help arrived, and whether the bites began before or after officers got there.
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