When Karen Hawthornthwaite left home with Benji, a Lhasa Apso who had provided invaluable comfort to her autistic son during the Covid lockdown, she could not have known it would be her last walk with the beloved family pet.

The 54-year-old teaching assistant was just yards from her home in the Lancashire market town of Darwen when a pocket-size American bully dog came bounding across the road and began mauling her dog.

A desperate struggle ensued as the pocket bully’s owner, who had been walking the dog with neither a muzzle nor a lead, attempted in vain to pull the animal away.

Helped by passers-by, Hawthornwaite battled to extract Benji’s leg from the dog’s jaws in scenes that were captured on CCTV.

The two bloody and interminably long minutes that followed were, she said, like a scene from a horror movie.

‘I was coming down the street and I’d seen this guy with this pocket bully breed off the lead,’ said Hawthornwaite. ‘It ran straight across the main road.

‘The owner had no control over it whatsoever. I said to myself, “That dog is going to get run over.” I didn’t think any more of it.’

But worse was to follow for Benji, who had become part of the family in the five years since Hawthornwaite bought him to help ease the anxiety of her son Riley during the global pandemic. 

Benji, a Lhasa Apso who acted as a therapy dog for 16-year-old Riley Hawthornwaite, left, is seen with the teenager and his 19-year-old sister Caitlin before he was fatally attacked

Pursued by its owner, an unmuzzled and unleashed pocket-size American bully dog is seen bounding across the road before mauling Benji in a brutal two-minute attack

Benji is seen at the vets’ surgery following the attack last month, which left the seven-year-old dog with a feeding tube after he refused to eat

‘When the attack first happened, the owner was telling me to pull Benji away, even though the dog had my boy’s leg in his mouth,’ said Hawthornwaite.

‘I thought, “If I do this, I’m going to pull his leg off.” 

‘The owner was thumping the dog with his fists. The woman across the road was thumping the dog too, screaming at [it] to let go. 

‘I can’t stop thinking of Benji’s face when it was happening. The owner gave an almighty pull and it eventually loosened; I’ve no idea how, everything’s a bit of a blur.

‘It took the efforts of multiple neighbours for the dog to let go. It was like a horror movie. This dog had blood all over its face, and so did Benji.

‘I couldn’t go inside because my son has autism and suffers from anxiety so I didn’t want him to see all the blood.

‘The owner took the dog away. Benji was shaking like mad.’

The owner of the pocket bulldog later signed an acceptable behaviour contract specifying that the animal should be kept on a lead at all times in residential areas.

The incident left Benji, pictured while still alive, with a 3cm deep incision in his front leg, which had to be amputated. However, an infection developed and he had to be put down a week later 

With its face bloodied, the pocket bully is held by its owner in the aftermath of the attack

But with Benji dead and her son inconsolable, Hawthornwaite believes the dog poses a risk to public safety and should be put down. 

‘My son is autistic and when Covid hit he wouldn’t leave the house at all,’ she said.

‘He suffers from autism and anxiety, and we bought Benji to try and help him get out of the house, but unfortunately this didn’t work.

‘My son is absolutely heartbroken and he wants this other dog dead now. This dog needs to be put down. For everybody’s safety, it needs to be put down.

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‘I don’t know where this dog is now, and I’m petrified of it doing it again. I certainly don’t want anybody to go through what I am going through.

‘All dogs should be on leads, especially if they are on main roads. It’s horrendous, knowing what dog it was – and the fact it was unmuzzled is just not right.

‘Next time with this dog, it could be a child, it could be anybody.’

A spokesperson for Lancashire Police said: ‘Having thoroughly reviewed all the circumstances and sought expert advice, it was deemed that this incident did not meet the criteria of any offences under the Dangerous Dog Act.

‘However, in order to reduce the likelihood of a similar incident happening again, the owner of the pocket bulldog was given an acceptable behaviour contract under the ASB, Crime and Policing Act, 2014 with specific conditions which include ensuring their dog is on a lead at all times in residential areas.’