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The mother of a five-year-old girl is calling for regulations to be put in place. First Nations community in Alberta after her daughter was dogs attacked.
Ashley Jong says her daughter Camila Hallett was attacked on October 14 and remains in hospital receiving treatment.
“I thought she was dying, I really thought she was dying. I thought she was dead,” she told Global News of the horrific attack.
Jeong said the family was in the yard that day cleaning out the house on Sucker Creek Road.
She said she went into the house briefly to use the toilet and asked her 10-year-old daughter to look after Camila, who is autistic and non-verbal.
She said seven minutes later when she returned to the street, Camila was missing and she began scrambling to find the young girl.
Chon and her 10-year-old child went in different directions to search. She told Global News that when her eldest daughter found Camila, there were “three dogs standing over her.”
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“There were two black German shepherd dogs — they were big — that were licking her inner thighs and biting her,” she said, adding that there was a third brown dog nearby. “My daughter and her friend ran up to my child, threw a shoe at the dogs, fought off the dogs. My eldest daughter picked up my five-year-old daughter in her arms and carried her to the neighbor's house because it was the closest house.”
The 10-year-old girl immediately called her mother, and Chon ran home.
Five-year-old Camila Hallett is pictured in hospital. On October 14, she was attacked by dogs.
Ashley Jeong
Jeong said she administered first aid to Camila while she and a neighbor tried to call 911, but calls kept dropping out.
Instead of waiting, Jeong picked up her daughter and rushed her to a hospital in High Prairie. She was then airlifted to Edmonton.
“An hour and a half later, she was transferred to surgery to stitch up the lacerations and make sure there were no internal injuries,” Jeong said.
Over the past almost two weeks, Camila has had to undergo numerous procedures, including skin grafts due to injuries to her legs. She also has several cuts and bruises.
Jeong said she wasn't sure how long Camila would stay in the hospital.
“It really depends on whether the skin graft takes, how it heals,” she said. “We'll know in five days once they open (things) up for a bandage change.”
Since the attack, Chung says he continues to push for changes to pet regulations.
She also said Sucker Creek First Nation contacted her and said they were identifying the pets and would look at different ways to deal with any animals that weren't reported.
Global News reached out to Indigenous Peoples but did not receive a response from the publication.
Jeong also said she hopes other Indigenous people will take their own steps to ensure what happened to her daughter doesn't happen again elsewhere.
“Seniors, children and families should be able to walk to their group office; we should be able to walk to our parks. I should feel safe outside my home, and I don't,” she said.
—with files from Global News' Eric Bay
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
