Driver left to get help, then came back to fight off pit bullsBy Cindy Wolff
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February 16, 2007
Zohnn Griggs stopped by the hospital Thursday to see the man whose life he may have saved. He wanted James Chapple to know that he did leave him Friday night when two pit bull terriers were attacking Chapple.

But he came back.

Chapple's left arm was amputated to the elbow after the dogs tore his hand off in an attack Friday night in front of All Star Auto Repair at 2161 Lamar. He said he had just gotten off a bus and was walking home when the dogs attacked.

Chapple's right arm was severely injured. He is recovering at the Regional Medical Center of Memphis.

Griggs was driving down Lamar headed to McDonald's with his two sons when he did a double-take.

Was that a man being attacked by two dogs?

He did a U-turn and came back. Chapple was yelling for help, begging the dogs to turn him loose. Griggs honked his horn. He started to get out. His sons grabbed him and were crying.

"I didn't want my daddy to get bitten," said 9-year-old DeShun Stinson, a fourth-grader at Hamilton Elementary.

The pit bull terriers came toward Griggs. He yelled for Chapple to get up.
"I can't," James Chapple told him. "I'm hurt. I'm really hurt."

Griggs drove away. Chapple thought the man left him there to die. He couldn't get anyone else to stop.

Griggs went to a nearby fire station. He called 911. He told the firemen what was happening. Then he grabbed a pipe and went back.

By then, two women had stopped in a car and were yelling. A man had gotten off a bus and had a hubcap and a spare tire in his hand but the dogs were still attacking.
The dogs were quiet, covered in blood. No growling, Griggs said. The man was quiet now too, unconscious and bleeding.

When Griggs got out of his truck, the larger of the two dogs charged him.
"I took that pipe and hit him," Griggs said. "He ran off and I went to the smaller one that still had the man by his arm. I hit that dog too and they both ran back up inside that shop."

The police and fire department arrived minutes later. Memphis Animal Services took the dogs and plan to euthanize them after a 10-day rabies watch. They cited the owner for possession of dangerous and vicious animals.

The shop's owner, Charles Lawson, said the dogs belong to his business partner and were kept inside the shop as guard dogs. He said he did not know how the dogs got out.

Memphis police don't plan to file charges because animal injury is not considered a criminal offense unless the animals were sicced on the man, said spokesman Lt. Vincent Higgins.

"I sure do thank you," Chapple told Griggs Thursday from his hospital bed. "You saved me. You saved me."

Griggs, 33, who is 6-2, played football and basketball at Booker T. Washington High School. He and his wife and sons live off South Parkway. He plays football with his sons, shuts off his cell phone at night for family time. He's not a hero, he said, just a man who did what he was supposed to do.

"I teach my boys that you're not a man if you see someone in trouble and you don't help," he said.

He told Chapple he'd be back to see him today.