Beyond the Interview: Essay of a Fatal Pit Bull Mauling
What began as a moderate follow up post to the June 10th interview turned into an 8,500 word essay documenting the fatal pit bull mauling of Daxton Borchardt. Over the past six weeks, Jeff and Susan shared many details with DogsBite.org through phone conversations and emails about what transpired on March 6th. They also shared their histories about the four months shadowing the young boy’s death. Both Jeff and Susan formerly believed, “It’s all how you raise them.”
Daxton Borchardt of Darien, Wisconsin at different times before his death.
Jeff arrived at Mercy-Walworth Medical Center eight minutes before the ambulance. An officer had told him the situation was very grave. “Dog bite” was listed on his son’s intake form. How bad could it be? he wondered. Until arriving, Jeff did not know that dogs had injured his son. After doctors stabilized the boy’s heart in preparation for the helicopter flight, a doctor emerged and repeated the words “very grave.” He asked Jeff if he would like to see him before the flight.This is the first time Jeff sees his son after the savage attack. In the WISN interview, Jeff said that he would never forget how his son looked afterward. “There were unimaginable bruises and bites all over his legs, his arms and his body,” he said. If only that was all that was forever seared into the father’s mind. In reality, one side of his son’s face was entirely ripped off, his skull crushed and one eye dangled from its socket. His wife was not spared this horrific imagery either.
Dax underwent a sustained, relentless mauling by two pit bulls that lasted up to 15 minutes. Total destruction ensued.
Upon seeing his son, Jeff immediately called his wife and told her to “pull over now.” Kim had been en route to Mercy at the time. In gasps, he explained the severity. All family members were told to drive to Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, about 40 miles away. The helicopter arrived the fastest. Kim arrived next in a frantic state, asking the trauma intake staff, “What happened? What happened?” When no one answered her, she collapsed to the floor.
A nurse helped Kim recover and showed her into a special waiting room. It was a ten-by-ten foot room lined with chairs. When Jeff and his father, driving together, arrived at Children’s, the hospital chaplain was standing outside. He took their car keys, handed them to the valet service and ushered them both into the room. Several of Kim’s friends filled chairs now. This is when doctors appeared the first time and told the family that 40 physicians were working to save Dax’s life.
When doctors emerged a second time, about 10 minutes later, they asked for consent to take x-rays. Startled by the question, Jeff said: “Yes, take the x-rays! Do whatever it takes!” My God! he thought to himself. Why are they asking us this? By this time the small room was filled with family and friends. After another 10 minutes, doctors appeared a third time. They pulled Jeff and Kim away and said, “He’s gone.” The doctors explained to them that he did not feel any pain.
“He was unconscious the whole time,” the chief doctor said.1
As the couple walked down the corridor to see their son one last time, they saw the faces of the doctors and nurses they passed by. Each held an expression of total defeat. Jeff said these expressions still plague him today. When they reached the trauma room where their son died, Jeff said it was like walking into an accident scene. Blood was everywhere — all over the floor and bed. His son’s lifeless body lay mainly covered up, but still exposing his massive head injuries.
“This is a war we are in,” Jeff realized after describing the trauma room where his son died.
Everyone in the small room was breaking down, weeping and sobbing. Slowly, trauma staff members began directing people into a new room, the hospital’s chapel. There were pews in the room and a bible. Jeff was striding back and forth in panic and disbelief. The chaplain asked Jeff if he would like to take a walk. He began walking down a hallway with the unknown man, away from his family. This is when the chaplain said to him, “In one week you will be able to function again.”2
The Day of the Attack
Images showing Susan’s backyard and dog run area, taken in winter 2012.
The arriving deputy initially feared it was a murder scene, according to reports. Bloodstained snow and fabric covered the backyard where the attack took place.
Walworth County Sheriff’s Office did not release details about the March 6th attack until nearly a month later. News articles published then reported that the two pit bulls turned from playful and “nippy” into a violent frenzy. We’ve since learned more about what occurred before and after the attack. The agreement between Susan and the boy’s parents was that Dax was always to be kept away from the two pit bulls and the dogs kenneled. March 6th had started that way.
It must be noted that Susan had babysat Dax at her home on at least 20 occasions previously without incident. The set up was always the same. She and Dax spent time in the front part of the house near her two pet chinchillas. The pit bulls were kept kenneled in the back part of the home near a sliding glass door that exited into the backyard and fenced dog run. Susan provided photographs of the backyard where the attack occurred (taken one year earlier) for this essay.
It was 12:30 pm and time for the dogs to be let outside. Susan dressed Dax in his coat; she had on snow boots and an unzipped parka. There was a routine when the dogs were let out of their kennels. Not only did they have to stay in their kennel until the door was fully open, but were also given an okay to exit. Susan was holding Dax on her hip when she opened the kennel doors. The dogs exited in the routine way then went out the glass door and headed toward the dog run.
Still holding Dax, Susan came strolling up behind. She opened the gate and away the dogs went. When it was time, Susan called her dogs to come inside. The dogs ran back normally then suddenly charged Susan and attacked. One clamped onto her leg and the other latched onto her coat, trying to pull her to the ground. A bite to Susan’s arm forced Dax out of her arms and sent them both spiraling into the snow. She scrambled to cover the little boy with her body.
She used the open sides of her parka to insulate the boy as her own dogs tore at her hair, one on either side. The pit bulls then started to dig into the snow around and underneath her to reach Dax. She frantically fought off the dogs, but neither responded to her repeated punches and kicks. She even jammed her thumb hard into her female pit bull’s eye with no result. The dogs continued their relentless assault, and in the end, were able to pull Susan away, separating her from Dax.
The gate, already unhinged on one side, was ripped down during the struggle, Susan said.
Every time she tried to stand up, the dogs knocked her back into the snow. She could see Dax lying on the ground and her two pit bulls guarding him. Under the haze of distorted time that afflicts people in life-threatening situations, Susan crawled far enough away to be able to rise to her feet. She knew while rising that this was her last chance to act. Her snow boots were loose and frayed. During the onslaught, her male pit bull had torn through them, ripping out the laces.
At this stage her two pit bulls were circling the boy — his bright red blood covered the surrounding snow and was soaking through it. Susan knew she had to run between the dogs with steady feet to pick up Dax. She also knew she might not make it out of the dog run alive. She raced between the two dogs as fast as she could, scooped up the boy and fled toward the house. As she was going through the door, the female pit bull ran under her legs nearly knocking her down again.
This is all that Susan can remember today. She may never remember the rest.
Police released the 911 call Susan made about a month after the fatal attack. The WISN video only depicted a small portion. Notably, the dispatcher is shocked as Susan screams into the phone, “Dogs, dogs, dogs!” The dispatcher inquires, “They attacked a baby?” Susan screams, “Yes!” Further into the 911 call, Susan warns the dispatcher that two pit bulls are running loose outside and that officers may encounter them. “They can shoot them, I don’t care!” Susan cried.
The arriving deputy initially feared it was a murder scene, according to reports. Bloodstained snow and fabric covered the backyard where the attack took place. The dogs had ripped Susan’s parka to shreds and stripped all of the clothing from the boy during the prolonged attack. Susan was still frantically speaking with 911 when the first deputy arrived. The officer found Dax in a room in the home, totally naked, lying on his back in a pool of blood. He initially thought the boy was dead.
A Meeting with the Detective
Three days after the attack, Jeff and his father drove to Elkhorn to meet with a county detective. Until this point, few specifics were known. Jeff only knew the dogs attacked Susan and killed Dax while she was babysitting him. Jeff initially believed the pit bulls had gotten to Dax while he was walking in her home or outside. He said that when he learned Susan had been carrying Dax when her own dogs attacked her in order to reach his son, everything changed for him.
“She suffered injuries, was sent to the hospital … THEY ATTACKED THE HAND THAT FED THEM!” Jeff wrote to DogsBite.org.
After three days of living in a shell-shocked emotional state, Jeff now had to listen to all of the disturbing details from the detective. From the moments leading up to the attack, to understanding the length of the attack — up to 15 minutes — and what followed. The length of the attack was the most devastating. “Did he know what was happening?” Jeff demanded. A question the Walworth County detective could not answer. He told Jeff his son’s death was a “perfect storm.”3
When Jeff called him three days later, he again told him it was a “perfect storm.”4
As the horror settled in, both Jeff and his wife began the next phase of severe emotional trauma, suffocation by the powerful forces of guilt. His wife Kim was the first to blame herself; she had failed him as a mother. “Why wasn’t I there to protect him?” she repeated desperately. Jeff soon followed, asking out loud, “Why did I ever leave Dax with those monsters? What was I thinking?My God!” From that point forward, feelings of guilt and the failure as parents enveloped them.
Jeff had long known pit bulls to be dog-aggressive. He cited a late 1990s episode of Cops, where an elderly woman’s small dog was killed by a pit bull. As the police drove away from the scene — fading into a commercial — Jeff recalled one said: “I respond to a lot of these kinds of calls. It’s a really sad part of my job. I would say 99% of the time, it’s a pit bull that is the killer.” This is why whenever he visited Susan’s home with his own two small dogs her pit bulls were kenneled.
“Why did I think it was okay for my son to be anywhere near these kinds of dogs?” Jeff asked.
Another prevailing myth cited by pit bull advocates and humane groups is that pit bulls are “dog-aggressive not human-aggressive,” despite the abundance of people the breed disfigures, maims and kills every year. Pit bulls were selectively bred for explosive animal aggression to excel in dogfighting. As far back as 1909, handlers used the term “man eaters” to describe prized fighters.5 Like a hand grenade going off, explosive aggression often lacks specificity.
Jeff also recalled on at least two occasions bringing Dax over to his friend Danny White’s home, the two went to grade school together and kept in touch.6 Danny had two large pit bulls that were not well disciplined, unlike Susan’s dogs. Hauntingly, Jeff reflected, “I let them lick his face once when he was still so small and he was in his car seat.” He added, “Another time, I had him sitting on my lap and let them lick him. It could have been then,” Jeff said. “What was I thinking?”
A few weeks into writing this essay, Jeff asked in an email, “Why couldn’t someone have warned me how bad it was with this breed before he was taken from us? Would I have listened to them?” He wrote that he did not know the answer to his questions. Up until his son’s brutal death, pit bulls exhibiting dog aggression had been his life experience, along with being backed by the “not people-aggressive” myth. Similar questions continue to rage in Jeff’s head today.
The Owners of the Dogs
Susan believes the attack lasted between 10 to 15 minutes. This time frame coincides with her two calls to 911 made at 12:44 and 12:46 pm. Her cell phone was out of reach during the violent attack. When she was finally able to reach it, trying to open the Android phone then clicking through the many prompts with stiff, freezing fingers from the snow — “Are you sure you want to call 911? Are you really, really sure?” — made making the life-saving 911 call that much harder.
Susan is also haunted by the fact that no one responded to her cries for help. “The backyard area was an echo chamber,” she said. Throughout the entire attack, she screamed as loudly as she could, “911 HELP! 911 HELP!” Her dogs were “going crazy,” she said, and growling loudly. “How did no one hear this?” she asked. At least one man did, according to police reports obtained by the media, but took no action after hearing a woman scream for up to 15 minutes.
A man working at a resort next door told deputies he’d heard Iwicki’s screams but did not go check out the situation because he thought it was children having a snowball fight at a nearby playground.
Susan said the “nearby playground” the man referred to is nearly a mile away in the opposite direction of her home, whereas the attack took place on a property adjacent to the resort. At this point, there was a long pause in our conversation, both of us painfully aware that any intervention on his part, including just calling 911 might have made a difference. He wasn’t alone either. Sandi McGough, the longtime innkeeper at the resort, who knew Susan and her dogs, heard as well.
“The housekeeper and maintenance man said they heard some yelling,” Sandi McGough told Fox 6 Now on March 6th. “We couldn’t exactly figure out where it was coming from,” she said. Susan had worked at the resort two years earlier. All of the housekeepers knew who she was. “Who else would be screaming next door?” Susan asked. Especially given that it was off-season and only a handful of people stayed year round? Susan has not visited the resort since the attack.
The excuses by the resort staff are a heartbreaking reflection on humankind. How did they feel after they learned what happened?7
Because of the location of her building, mostly hidden behind another home, Susan knew she would have to direct the officer onto the property. After she rushed inside carrying Dax, she laid him down in a room. She grabbed a child gate and shoved it into the doorway — one pit bull was also in the home. Susan ran to the other side of the house, seized the dog and dragged her into the kitchen. She barricaded the open doorway by stacking up chairs to keep the dog inside.
Dax was secured when she ran outside to direct the officer, she said. As she stood in the snow in her shredded parka, she continued to talk to 911. The first deputy arrived quickly. She saw the deputy get out of his vehicle and walk toward the backyard. The male pit bull, still loose outside, ran up to the man and sniffed him. The officer did not believe the dog posed a threat at that time. As soon as he turned the corner and saw the horrific scene, she heard the officer shriek.
“Hearing the officer scream, this is when I knew I was not in a dream,” Susan said.
She remained standing in the driveway shaking in the cold. When the ambulance arrived, she called her boyfriend Steve. “You and Jeff need to get here now!” she said. At the time, Steve and Jeff were together at a job site installing carpeting. Deputies, however, did not want Susan using her phone. They took her phone away and told the men to go to the hospital. Steve was told about a “dog bite” during the call, but had no idea of the gravity. He rushed Jeff to the hospital.8
Susan’s clothes were drenched in Dax’s blood. Some of that blood was also her own, injuries incurred while fighting off her own dogs. The second ambulance that arrived was for her. When it reached the hospital, doctors were still working to stabilize Dax’s heart for the helicopter flight. Coincidentally, one of the nurses at Mercy working on Dax was a woman that Susan had known from childhood. After her shift and returning home, she learned that Susan was the babysitter.
Susan struggles with the many personal connections involved in the “worst day of my life,” she said.
Since the March 6th attack, Susan said that no one has walked into the fenced dog run in the backyard. Not even the landlord has used it, whose dog Judy used to spend long summer days in the run playing with Susan’s two pit bulls. Before deputies left on March 6th, Susan said they shoveled over the bloody snow in the extensive attack area, hiding most of it.9 Not long after the attack, a warm spell arrived. As the snow melted, she said, “There was burnt snow everywhere.”
Additional Clarifications
Susan wanted to clarify an aspect that is stated earlier in this piece, “the two pit bulls turned from playful and ‘nippy’ that day into a violent frenzy.” The “nippy” terminology was taken from police reports released to the media on April 1st. She doesn’t believe she ever said the term “nippy” while being interviewed by police in her hospital room. The word implies bad ownership. Her two dogs were “never nippy,” she said. Further, “batting dogs away is not playful,” she said.
She also wanted to address how her and Steve got the two pit bulls. Susan grew up with a German shepherd, but had friends that owned the breed. Steve had previously owned a pit bull along with other dog breeds. The two had discussed getting a dog for a while. When one of their friends said her pit bull was about to have a litter, the couple acted. They took two puppies from the litter. Getting the dogs was about timing and opportunity, she said, not a “political statement.”
“Doing research before getting the puppies never crossed her mind,” Susan said. She thought all dogs were the same.
Like the father, Susan believed the myth, “It’s all how you raise them.” Believing this myth, perpetuated by pit bull owners, humane groups and veterinarians, resulted in the death of Dax. Jeff and Susan wanted to be part of this essay so that others who intentionally or unintentionally believe this myth can realize the truth. On March 6th, Susan’s well-raised pit bulls acted out their genetic heritage by inflicting an unpredictable destructive attack that took a young boy’s life.
The Deceitful, Harmful Controversy
Susan holds Penny as a puppy, Bosston and Penny as adults, taken in 2013.
Zealous breed advocates lie and use “perceived expert” tactics all the time. Serocki’s deceitful method, however, sheds new light on the “organized” pro-pit bull effort.
In the several hours leading up to his son’s death, Jeff posted updates to his Facebook status about his son’s critical condition. Family members and friends were posting messages as well. News of the attack spread rapidly through the community via local media reports. Jeff Borchardt is a popular deejay in his area and has over 1,800 Facebook friends. On March 6th, his Facebook timeline began overflowing with messages from family members, friends and fans.
Within hours of Jeff posting, “He didn’t make it,” that landscape changed.
Jeff was stricken after the attack, robbed of his son’s life, left only with the images of the destructive injuries inflicted by the dogs. In a shaken mental state, he posted some of his thoughts about pit bulls to his status. Instantly, he was thrown into the sphere of fanatical pit bull owners, some of which were his friends. Breed advocates bombarded his timeline with propaganda, “All dogs bite!” and “Don’t blame the breed!” Some posted photos of pit bulls cuddling with babies.
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