14 DAY TRIAL // Great-grandmother Gloria Knowles of Morden, South London, UK, was killed as she went to feed her daughter Beverley Mason's five dogs, on Tuesday night.
The woman lived next door to her daughter, the Daily Mail reports. 65-year-old neighbor Kevin Hamilton heard “hysterical screaming and barking” coming from the house, at 5:15pm, but didn't think much of it, believing Mrs. Knowles' grandchildren had come home.
It wasn't until the woman's daughter and son in law returned that emergency services were called at the scene.
Beverley Mason lives with her husband and three of their children, while her mother shared a home with her granddaughter, who also had a baby.
The Masons owned two large Bordeaux French mastiffs, two American bulldogs and a small mongrel, which were seized after the incident.
Officials believe Mrs. Knowles had a heart attack, after being attacked by the pack. Police reports revealed she had sustained a “number of injuries.” However, an investigation is on its way to confirm the cause of death.
An ambulance was called as Knowles' son in law discovered the woman's body, who was alone in the house at the time of the incident. By the time first responders arrived, she had stopped breathing.
“We were called at 6.12pm to [a house] in Morden to a patient in cardiac arrest. Sadly, the patient was dead at the scene,” a London Ambulance Service spokesman stated.
Gloria Knowles had lived on the same street for 40 years. Her neighbor, Mr. Hamilton explained that many in the community were terrified by the beast, especially by the mastiffs with “enormous chests.”
“If one jumped on you it would certainly knock you over,” he said.
“They were vicious dogs – you knew by how they pulled on the lead and you could hear them barking from my house,” another neighbor described.