Assistant DA fights off dog attack

By Emily Ford

eford@salisburypost.com

Karen Biernacki, a Rowan County assistant district attorney, fought off an 85-pound dog Friday evening and suffered numerous bites to her face and arms.

“Copper,” a Rottweiler-mix that Biernacki rescued a year ago and nursed back to health, attacked the prosecutor when she inspected the dog’s paw, which Biernacki suspected was injured.

Biernacki said the attack does not change her election plans. She is running to succeed her boss, Rowan County District Attorney Bill Kenerly, who will retire in December.

Biernacki, who called 911 herself, sustained three to four puncture wounds on each arm and said she can’t count the number of stitches in her face. She stayed on her feet throughout the ordeal, while the dog repeatedly lunged at her and bit her forehead, arms and nose.

Recovering at home Saturday night, Biernacki told the Post that she plans to return to the courtroom this week.

“She’s tough,” Kenerly said.

Kenerly said he told Biernacki to “stay home a week or a month or whatever she needed,” but she declined.

“That’s classic Karen,” he said. “That’s the way she is, and in fact the only time she got emotional when I talked to her was when she was talking about the dog and that he would have to be destroyed.”

As she does every day, Biernacki stopped by her mother’s home Friday after work. Copper lived in a 40-by-60 foot dog lot at her mother’s house on Foster Road in Cleveland.

When she entered the lot to feed the dog, Biernacki said she noticed that one of his paws appeared injured.

She ran her thumb over the dog’s pad.

“He flipped out,” she said. “He went crazy.”

The dog, which Biernacki said has always been docile and affectionate, began growling and lunging.

“He got my left arm. He bit me several times,” she said. “I got my hand around the upper part of his snout and squeezed as hard as I could.

“I was trying to talk to him and calm him down.”

When the dog released its grip, Biernacki said she grabbed a five-gallon bucket of water and pulled it between them.

“But he came at me again. I threw the bucket at him, and he got me above my left eye,” she said. “Thank God I never went down.”

The dog lunged again and ripped her nostril. She knocked him down, and he bit her right arm.

The dog lot has a series of gates, and Biernacki yelled to her mother to unlatch the inner gate.

“He was still fighting and coming after me,” she said. “I dragged him to the gate, and I managed to get out.”

The dog remained in the lot. Her mother was not injured.

Biernacki called 911 and sat on the porch, covered in blood. She called her brother, Steve Simpson, who arrived quickly, and her husband, Paul, who was participating in a bicycle event in Charlotte to raise money for cancer research. He met her at the hospital.

First responders from the Scotch Irish Volunteer Fire Department were Biernacki’s neighbors.

They applied pressure dressings and monitored her vital signs until Rowan County EMS transported her to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem.

A plastic surgeon stitched her forehead and “sewed my nostril back together,” she said.

The puncture wounds were left open in an effort to prevent infection.

The surgeon predicted her wounds would heal well but said she may need surgery later to “buff off” any scars, Biernacki said.

Rowan County Animal Control seized the dog, which was not aggressive when the officer arrived, Biernacki said.

“He was wagging his tail,” she said. “Of course, he was covered in blood.”

The dog was current on all vaccinations, she said.

Copper originally belonged to someone in Biernacki’s neighborhood who kept the dog chained and neglected the animal, she said.

An animal lover, Biernacki fed him for six months, then took him to the vet when she suspected that he had heart worms.

When the test came back positive, Biernacki confronted the owner and offered to treat the dog if he would give the animal to her.

He agreed, she said.

“He was about to die,” she said. “He was in bad shape.”

Copper recovered and was a good pet, until Friday.

“I have no doubt that he loves me,” she said. “He just went crazy. He wasn’t hearing me, he wasn’t seeing me, I wasn’t getting through to him.”

Biernacki said she asked the Rowan Animal Clinic to see that the dog was humanely and painlessly euthanized.

“I would be afraid to be around him any more,” she said. “He would have killed my mom.”

Contact Emily Ford at 704-797-4264.