Plymouth father survives brutal attack by neighbor’s pit bulls

PLYMOUTH, Minn. — A father is recounting a vicious pit bull attack he suffered in front of his home in Plymouth this week.
Emil Mammadov had pieces of his face torn off and needed stitches all over his body after two of his neighbor’s dogs jumped him Monday around midnight.
Mammadov is Azerbaijani and doesn’t speak much English, so his daughter, Fatima Mammadova, translated for him when he spoke to WCCO.
“The dogs were all aiming at his neck, and he just didn’t care much about the rest of his body,” Fatima Mammadova said. “He was trying to protect his neck. And he knows that those dogs are very aggressive.”
Mammadov’s wife, Ilaha Mammadova, and his daughter ran outside when they heard his agony.
“He was screaming from like the last bits from his lungs that he had left, like all his power, to tell [my mother and sister] to stay away also from the dogs,” Fatima Mammadova said.
They turned on some lights, and the dogs ran off.
“The moment that changed the willpower inside of him was when he saw my mom and my sister,” Fatima Mammadova said. “That gave him more power to get up.”
Plymouth police are investigating the attack. No arrests have been made.
The Mammadovs say both pit bulls, plus two more, have been taken from their neighbors and put in quarantine.
“Hopefully they’re not going to come back because they are not really safe for our community,” said Ilaha Mammadova. “Most of the time they are on no leashes, walking in their backyard all the time, and we have so many kids around, biking, running around, playing.”
Mammadov will be out of his job as a professional chef for at least a few weeks. But he says this incident has shown him how strong he is.
“He has four kids,” said Fatima Mammadova. “He needs to raise them, and he kept fighting just for us.”
Ilaha Mammadova shared the first thing her husband said when he got to the emergency room.
“He said that it’s good that it was me, not the kids, because they [wouldn’t] survive,” she said.