North Jersey PSE&G employee used umbrella to save little girl from pit bull attack
Training can be everything.
It helped Paul Manzi save a 9-year-old girl when he jumped between her and an attacking pit bull with just an umbrella.
Manzi, a PSE&G employee, was stopped at a traffic light on Mount Prospect Avenue in Newark when he saw a little girl running down the street trying to get away from a chasing pit bull. Right behind the dog was a woman, who was running to catch up to the little girl. Manzi said he later learned that the woman was the girl's mom.
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The girl ran around a parked car and the dog followed. The woman, at that point, tripped and fell as the dog reached the girl. Manzi said when the dog reached the girl, he knew the situation was dire. That's when his training kicked in.
'I ran to the back of my truck to get a stick, and I saw the umbrella," Manzi said.
That's all he needed to save the girl.
PSE&G, which trains its workers on how to deal with many job hazards, had brought in a dog trainer who instructed employees that an umbrella is an effective way to ward off a dog attack.
When he reached the girl, she was on the ground and the dog was on top of her. The mom had caught up and was trying to pull the pit bull off the girl.
"You could see her picking up the dog by the skin," he said. "She's the one who was the real hero."
Still, she needed help, so he got between the dog and the girl with the umbrella.
"I was amazed that it worked," Manzi said. 'I think it confuses dogs. ... The pit bull tried to get at me, but he couldn't get around the umbrella.'
The deployment of the umbrella allowed the woman and her daughter to retreat behind a gated fence. As he looked around, he saw onlookers, some of whom had pulled out their phones to either record the incident or call for help.
Manzi said the dog eventually ran off and he approached the mom and girl.
"I asked them if the girl was OK and the mom said no," Manzi said.
He called 911, and soon EMTs arrived followed by police. Manzi said he never got the name of the girl or her mom, saying English was not their primary language.
Newark Police Department spokeswoman Catherine Adams found the police incident report, which said that at about 12:03 p.m. on Dec. 4, police responded to the 600 block of Mount Prospect Avenue.
"Responding officers located a woman and a 9-year-old girl who both had reportedly been bitten by a pit bull. EMS evaluated both victims," Adams said. "The dog did not remain at the scene."
'It was a bad week,' Manzi said of that first week in December. He said that earlier in the week he responded to shut off the gas at a house that was on fire. Another day, he rendered aid to a cyclist he saw struck by a car.
Manzi said he's a member of the PSE&G Safety Council, and the company's strong safety culture also helped him kick into action when needed.
'I went back to the Safety Council to tell everyone how well the umbrella worked,' Paul said. 'Public Service is an amazing company with a great safety culture. Any one of us would have done the same thing.'
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Lauren Ugorji, a PSE&G spokeswoman, said that although Manzi reported the incident right away, it took a while for it to go through the chain of communication.
"They are quite humble," she said. "They don't always let us know right away."
Manzi said he doesn't see his reaction as heroic, but a function of his training.
'I'm pretty boring,' he said when describing himself and his nearly 19 years of service in PSE&G Gas Operations. 'I'm a grandpa of four grandchildren, and I think that had a lot to do with me helping that little girl.'
Ugorji said the training works. In 2024, PSE&G made more than 1.5 million service calls and only had three dog attacks reported.
By comparison, the U.S. Postal Service reported 5,800 dog attacks last year.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ man used umbrella to save girl from pit bull attack
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