Mother frantically tries to stop dog from attacking daughter, pleads for help in 911 call

Triniti Harrell remains hospitalized at UNC Children's Hospital in Chapel Hill after the attack, which ended when an Edgecombe County deputy shot and killed the dog.

"I need some help. My dog is attacking my daughter," Miranda Harrell told a 911 dispatcher. "Hurry, she's dying. Please hurry."

Harrell pleaded with the dispatcher for help or asked him to "please hurry" about three dozen times in the 9½-minute call.

"Can you get a hold of anything to try to get the dog off her?" the dispatcher asks. "Can you try to get something to separate them? I've got everybody I can get en route to you."

The dispatcher first suggests shoving a stick in the dog's mouth to pry it's jaw open. Then, he told Harrell to hit the dog with a pan or a shovel to halt the attack.

"Hit him with it. Hit him right in the center of the top of his head," he says. "If you hit him hard enough, you'll knock him out."

Harrell says she tried to hit the dog with a garden hoe, but it didn't work.

"I'm hitting him as hard as I can," she says.

"Can you run in the house and grab a steak knife or something?" the dispatcher asks. "If you will run in the house and get a knife, I will tell you how to get him off her."

"I can't leave her out here," Harrell replies.

"It'll take you 30 seconds to run in the house and grab it," the dispatcher says.

Harrell continues screaming at the dog to stop and begging for help on the phone.

"Ma'am, yelling at him is not going to change anything. I need you to find something sharp, and I'll explain to you how to get the dog off of her," the dispatcher tells her.

After a couple minutes, she runs into her house and grabs a knife, and the dispatcher instructs her how to slit the dog's throat.

"Cut him across the bottom of his neck. It's going to release his jaw muscles. He won't have a choice but to let go," he says.

"I'm trying. The blade isn't sharp enough," Harrell says.

"I need you to do anything you can do with that to make that dog let go. The dog's life is not a concern to me at this point," the dispatcher says.

She again says the knife is too dull to work, and the dispatcher tells her to do whatever she can to stop the attack. The call then drops.

Edgecombe County Sheriff Clee Atkinson said Harrell tried to stab the dog before the deputy arrived and shot it.

"I did all I could," Harrell told WRAL News on Wednesday.

"It's just one of those incidents," Atkinson said. "They were playing, having a good time, and the dog reacted at some point."