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Mauling Ruled Suicide: Rebecca Hardy Killed Herself By Climbing In With Pit Bulls

By Tara Dodrill
Published on: 04:36 PST, Dec 12, 2015

A Michigan dog mauling has been ruled a suicide. Rebecca Hardy, 22, climbed into a fenced backyard known to contain attack dogs on purpose, according to the Port Huron medical examiner’s report. The body of the young mother was found inside the dog fence on Thursday.

The county medical examiner officially ruled the pit bull dog mauling a suicide after reviewing the injuries to the neck and face of Rebecca Hardy. The wounds were determined to have been caused by “multiple dogs,” according to the Detroit Free Press. The day after the fatal dog attack, two adult pit bulls and a pit bull-husky mix puppy that were inside the fence where Hardy died were all put down.

Ljubisa Dragovic, the Oakland County Medical Examiner said that Hardy was “obviously” aware of the vicious nature of the attack dogs, which were confined inside a secure fence, before she chose to climb over the barrier and put herself in harm’s way.

The medical examiner also said that during the investigation into the fatal pit bull attack he learned that Rebecca Hardy had attempted suicide in the past and had recently been kicked out of her house. Even if the Michigan mom had been under the influence of either drugs or alcohol during the mauling, Dragovic said the death is still a suicide because the woman made an intentional decision to climb into a “dangerous area.”

Hardy was transported to Lake Huron Medical Center and then flown via a local life flight service to Beaumont Hospital, where she ultimately died from the wound sustained during the dog mauling. According to police investigators assigned to the case, Rebecca climbed over the fence of a nearby residence at 1721 Tenth Street and was bitten by a pit bull and then bitten by the mixed breed puppy.

A witness to the fatal dog attack reportedly attempted to subdue the dogs and help the woman, but failed to pull the pit bulls off of Hardy. The owner of the dogs was eventually able to get the animals to release and tried to offer help to the young mother while waiting on an ambulance to arrive.

Rebecca Hardy was a mother to an 18-month-old daughter and was engaged to Matthew Grattan. It is currently unclear if Grattan is the baby’s father. During an interview with the Times Herald, the fiancé said that he was finding it very difficult to fathom that Rebecca would kill herself by climbing into the area with the pit bulls on purpose.

“I, in no way, shape or form believe that she was looking to hurt herself on that day. She had a little girl. … She wanted us to be a family, Grattan said. “It’s so much about the pit bulls that it seems like it’s not so much about my fiancé anymore,” the fiance added when referencing the media attention to the dog mauling.

Grattan said that he is in mourning and is attempting to ignore all the speculation and controversy brewing around the death of Rebecca Hardy. When asked by local reporters if the woman showed signs of attempting to protect herself from the pit bulls, the county medical examiner said that one of the doctors on his team had performed the review of the body and that he was not currently aware of whether or not any defensive wounds existed.

[Image via Shutterstock]

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