distraught

A MARRIED couple who were tragically mauled by four viscous dogs at a barbecue have been left traumatised and the husband “permanently disfigured.”

The male was viciously attacked, losing his lower ear, while his wife suffered scratches and was left “distraught”.

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On Thursday, the dog owners appeared at Newcastle Crown Court to be sentenced for the event which took place on December 27, 2021, ChronicleLive reports.

The court heard that when the attack occurred, friends Daniel Hutchinson, 33, and Michelle King, 44, were at a barbecue in North Tyneside.

Dog-breeder Hutchinson was hosting the event at his then-address on Blackhill Avenue in Wallsend.

His two American Bull Mastiffs called Flake and Major were there, along with King’s two dogs of the same breed, Ghost and Bonny.

King had purchased the dogs from Hutchinson.

During the barbecue, the four hounds ran off and attacked an unsuspecting couple.

Prosecutor, Rachel Kelly told the court that the four dogs were playing unsupervised when the four dogs ran off and mauled the victims at around 8.30pm.

She said: “Both were taken to the ground. [The man] was bitten a number of times, causing the loss of his lower ear.

“He sustained puncture wounds and injuries to his hands and fingers. [The woman] sustained scratches.”

Hutchinson – who said he’d been away buying cannabis at the time – and King, then ran to the dogs and rounded them up before returning to the house, where an ambulance was then called.

The dog owners appeared in court via video links on Thursday to be sentenced for offences of being an owner/person in charge of a dangerously out of control dog.

Both defendants pleaded guilty.

The court heard that the man had been left “permanently disfigured” after the viscous attack.

In a victim statement the woman said she felt “distraught that this could happen.”

While Hutchinson, from Fife, Scotland, had 24 previous convictions for 44 offences, including criminal damage.

He was sentenced to 18 months in prison, but due to time spent on remand, he will likely be released immediately.

Recorder Nathan Moxon said that attack was an “isolated, one-off incident” and did not ban either of the defendants from keeping animals.

King, from Thornton, Scotland, had a previous conviction for wasting police time, bur was of good character, the court heard.

The court was told that she was remorseful, saying the attack was a tragic accident.

Mark Harrison, defending, asked for King’s prison sentence to be suspended, explaining that professionals had previously been around her dogs and “felt safe.”

The court also heard that King has a history of poor mental health and is at a “low risk of repetition.”

She was sentenced to 10 months in prison, suspended for 18 months.

Mr Moxon added that the incident must have been “a truly terrifying experience” for the victims.

No destruction orders were made and the two no longer own the Bull Mastiffs.

As Israel’s forced starvation tightens its grip on Gaza’s entire population, an increasing number of Palestinian families are frantically searching for news of relatives who undertook perilous journeys to get food from aid distribution points, never to return.

Khaled Obaid has been searching for his beloved son, Ahmed, for two months, scanning every passing vehicle on the coastal road in Deir-el-Balah, hoping against all odds that one of them might bring him home.

The boy had left the displaced family’s tent in the central town to find food for his parents and sister, who had lost her husband during the war, and headed to the Zikim crossing point, where aid trucks enter northern Gaza.

“He hasn’t returned until now. He went because he was hungry. We have nothing to eat,” the distraught father told Al Jazeera, breaking down in tears with his wife under the blue tarpaulin where they are sheltering.

Khaled reported his son’s disappearance to the International Committee of the Red Cross, and every official body he could reach, to radio silence. To this day, he has received no answers on Ahmed’s whereabouts.

Khaled’s story is all too common under Israel’s ongoing punishing blockade of Gaza, where the largely displaced population faces a stark choice between starvation and braving the bullets fired by Israeli soldiers and United States security contractors in a bid to get food from Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites. These distribution points have been dubbed “death traps” and “human slaughterhouses” by the United Nations and rights groups.

It is a life-or-death gamble that has taken the lives of nearly 1,400 people, shot dead mainly by the Israeli army, at the aid sites since they started operations in late May and along food convoy routes, according to figures released by the UN last week. That is, without counting the untold numbers of missing aid seekers, like Ahmed.

Human rights monitors have been collecting harrowing firsthand accounts of people who have gone missing in Gaza, only to be found later, killed by Israeli forces.

“In many cases, those who went missing are apparently killed near the aid distribution points, but due to the Israeli targeting, their bodies remained unreachable,” Maha Hussaini, the head of media at the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, told Al Jazeera.

“Many Palestinians left home with empty hands, hoping to return with a bag of flour. But many never came back,” said Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir-el-Balah. “In Gaza, the line between survival and disappearance is now heartbreakingly thin.”

As the number of missing aid seekers mounts, famine stalks the enclave, with more than 80 adults reportedly dying of starvation over the past five weeks alone, and 93 children succumbing to man-made malnutrition since the war began.

Authorities in Gaza say an average of 84 trucks have entered the besieged enclave each day since Israel eased restrictions on July 27. But aid organisations say at least 600 aid trucks are needed per day to meet the territory’s basic needs.

‘Death circle’

On Monday, amid growing international condemnation over the mass starvation, seen by many as being deliberately engineered by Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to double down on his war goals.

Netanyahu announced that he would convene a meeting of his cabinet on Tuesday to ensure that “Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel”. Israel’s Channel 12 cited an official as saying that Netanyahu was tending towards expanding the offensive.

The announcement came on another bloody day in the Strip, with at least 74 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks since dawn on Monday, including 36 aid seekers, according to medical sources.

Among the attacks, at least three people were killed by an Israeli strike on a house in Deir el-Balah, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

A source at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City reported that seven people were killed in Israeli shelling on multiple areas in the Shujayea neighbourhood, east of Gaza City.

Emergency services said that two were killed in an Israeli bombing of Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza.

It also emerged on Monday that a nurse at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah was killed when he was hit by an airdropped box of aid.

This week, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, described the dangerous airdrops as a “distraction” and smokescreen.

On Monday, UNICEF warned that 28 children – essentially an entire “classroom” – are dying each day from Israeli bombardment and lack of aid.

“Gaza’s children need food, water, medicine and protection. More than anything, they need a ceasefire, NOW,” said the UN agency on X.

Death by bombardments.
Death by malnutrition and starvation.
Death by lack of aid and vital services.
In Gaza, an average of 28 children a day – the size of a classroom – have been killed.

Gaza’s children need food, water, medicine and protection. More than anything, they need a… pic.twitter.com/7QIQQ6IAoG

— UNICEF (@UNICEF) August 4, 2025

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called on the UN Security Council to “assume its responsibilities” by enforcing an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, conducting an official visit to the territory and implementing calls at a recent UN conference in New York for a two-state solution.

In a statement posted on social media on Monday, the ministry warned that more than two million Palestinians in Gaza are “living in a tight death circle of killing, starvation, thirst, and deprivation of medicine, treatment, and all basic human rights”.

AN American hunting influencer has sparked outrage after she filmed a video of herself snatching a baby wombat from its mother.

Sam Jones, who claims to be a “wildlife biologist and environmental scientist” posted the, now deleted, video on Instagram capturing the moment she picked up the animal and ran with it as it dangled around in the air.

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After racing across the road with the startled wombat, Jones held it up to the camera and said: “I caught a baby wombat!”

Meanwhile, the baby wombat’s mother chased after Jones, appearing extremely distressed.

This was noticed by the man filming the video who said: “look at the mother, it’s chasing after her.”

Jones said: “OK mama’s right there and she is p***ed, let’s let him go.”

She then released the joey back onto the side of the road.

The footage has been met with an influx of backlash.

But this is not Jones’ first or only distressing interaction with a helpless animal.

An article the hunting publication Cowboy State Daily, where Jones went by the name of Samantha Strable, reported her goal of hunting her first black bear during the spring bear season in Wyoming.

Jones was also described in the article to have “stalked red stags with a bow in Chile” and slay “a wild pig with a knife in New Zealand.”

Responding to the backlash of her more recent engagement with the helpless wombat, Jones defended herself and claimed she only held the joey momentarily before returning it to its mother.

She wrote: “For everyone that’s worried and unhappy, the baby was carefully held for ONE minute in total and then released back to mum.

“They wandered back off into the bush together completely unharmed. I didn’t think I would be able to catch it in the first place, and took an opportunity to appreciate a really incredible animal up close.”

Despite her defence, outrage at her behaviour has continued to grow, leading her to delete the video from her social media and switch her accounts from public to private.

Affronted Australians have demand that Jones be reported to Australian Department of Home Affairs: “so they can ban her from ever stepping foot in Australia again.”

Others remarked she should be deported and commented: ‘”Arrest. Fine. Deport. Ban.”

Another wrote: “As a wildlife rescuer specialising in wombats I can tell you… that this is an absolutely terrifying experience for mum and joey.”

A third commented: “Oh my god. Why do people feel the need to just insert themselves in nature and desecrate it? Leave them be! This poor mother is trying to protect her young. Disgusting behaviour.”

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