PALMDALE, Calif. – A pack of dogs remained under quarantine at a Mojave Desert shelter on Friday as investigators tried to determine whether they were involved in a mauling that killed a jogger.

By afternoon, Los Angeles County sheriff’s homicide investigators had not announced any DNA match between the six pit bulls seized Thursday and the four believed to have attacked the woman in the high desert neighborhood of Littlerock earlier in the day, Deputy Guillermina Saldana said.

The county coroner’s office identified her on Friday as Pamela Marie Devitt, 63.

A woman in a car saw pit bulls attacking the runner in the area 65 miles northeast of Los Angeles. The driver called 911 and honked her horn to try to get the dogs to stop, sheriff’s Lt. John Corina said.

An arriving deputy saw a single dog still attacking the jogger and tried to chase it off, Corina said.

“The dog ran off into the desert, then turned around and attacked the deputy,” who took a shot at the animal before it ran off, Corina said.

The woman died in an ambulance on the way to a hospital, said Evelina Villa, spokeswoman for the county Department of Animal Care and Control.

Hours later, sheriff’s and animal control officials served a search warrant on a home near the site of the attack and took away eight dogs, six pit bulls and two mixed-breeds. A 29-year-old man from the house, identified as Alex Donald Jackson, was arrested on suspicion of cultivating marijuana.

The dogs were being kept under quarantine for rabies observation at a Lancaster shelter, said Marcia Mayeda, the county’s animal control director.

The agency will seek to have any dogs involved in the attack destroyed, Mayeda said.

 

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