A Florida woman has been arrested after authorities said her two dogs fatally mauled a neighbor. There had reportedly been over a dozen complaints about the dogs before the fatal dog attack.
Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey announced the arrest of 29-year-old Linda Cutler at a recent press conference. Cutler was charged with manslaughter in connection with the death of 50-year-old Jodi Cowan, who reportedly was mauled to death by Cutler’s dogs.
‘We have a complete cultural meltdown where everybody’s got these big pit bulls, and nobody’s taking proper care of them.’
Judge David Koenig initially considered a $250,000 bond for Cutler but ultimately revoked it due to a prior arrest, ordering her to remain in jail, WKMG-TV reported.
Brevard County jail records show Cutler was previously charged with grand theft of a motor vehicle, possession of a controlled substance, and failure to appear.
In the early morning hours of May 19, Cowan was walking her own dog in her neighborhood in Cocoa.
Ivey said that’s when Cutler’s dogs climbed over a fence and “brutally” attacked Cowan.
“The dogs identified as Max and Mako climbed over the owner’s fence and began to brutally attack and maul Cowan, forcing her to the ground, viciously attacking her, and eventually dragging her across the ground for quite some distance,” Ivey said during the press conference.
Ivey stated that a neighbor’s surveillance camera caught the dogs charging toward Cowan before attacking her.
As Blaze News previously reported, Cowan’s partner of 25 years discovered her in a pool of blood as the dogs continued to try to drag her away.
Cowan’s partner, Donnell Smith, told WESH-TV he left his home to help a neighbor around 1 a.m., and Cowan and her dog were gone when he returned.
Smith said he heard a faint cry for help and then witnessed Cowan being dragged away by the animals.
“I saw the silhouette of the two dogs dragging my wife down the road, off into the grass in front of the truck down there,” a tearful Smith explained.
Smith recalled, “I pulled my knife out, you know, just swinging [it with] one hand and holding the blood with the other, trying to stop her from bleeding.”
“It was brutal. Seeing the same woman I’ve loved for the last 30 years, 25 years just ripped apart by two animals was just … I’ll never get that image out of my mind,” Smith noted.
Smith called 911, and Cowan was transported to the hospital but succumbed to her injuries about four hours later, according to Sheriff Ivey.
Smith believes his wife may have lost her life because she was attempting to rescue her own dog.
“They must have been chasing our little dog, and she went to save her little dog, to get him,” Smith said. “And then they switched their attention to her when she tried to get them off our little dog.”
Smith told WESH that he had previously alerted the sheriff’s office about Cutler’s dogs.
“I told them that she had those two pits that get out all the time and run the neighborhood and have been aggressive toward people, and they didn’t do anything about it,” Smith stated. “My wife lost her life because of it.”
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WESH-TV reported that there were “more than a dozen calls made to animal control” regarding complaints about Cutler’s dogs dating back to 2024.
Cutler was issued four citations after two calls about dog bites in January and February 2024, according to WESH.
A complaint in 2025 claimed the dogs killed an outdoor cat.
WESH reported that one of the dogs bit someone on April 14, 2026, and the individual was taken to an emergency room.
Other calls focused on Cutler’s dogs running loose in the neighborhood.
WKMG-TV reported that the earlier incidents were not about the two dogs involved in the deadly mauling.
“It’s also important to note that during the early calls from 2024 through November of ’25, the calls at Cutler’s residence were related to other dogs, as the two dogs involved in this attack were puppies back then,” Ivey stated.
A neighbor told WESH, “We have a complete cultural meltdown where everybody’s got these big pit bulls, and nobody’s taking proper care of them.”
The neighbor added, “It is constant that dogs are running loose, and I understand that dogs are property, and the county is limited on what they can do, but a lady is dead.”
Ivey said, “Linda Cutler had specific and documented knowledge that her dogs repeatedly got out of her yard and additional knowledge that her dogs were attacking humans and had actually bitten someone.”
Ivey said Cutler “took minimal action to prevent her dogs from getting out of her yard.”
During the investigation, agents took a sworn statement from Cutler, who admitted that her dogs “routinely” escaped her yard and had to “repeatedly” return to her home, according to Ivey.
Sheriff Ivey said that Cutler confessed that she knew that one of her dogs previously had bitten another person, and her dogs were becoming “more and more aggressive, even toward her.”
Cutler claimed that she installed an additional fence, but knew there were holes through which her dogs escaped the yard, the sheriff said.
Ivey added that Cutler was staying at a beachfront hotel when officers with the Melbourne Police Department arrested her on the manslaughter warrant while responding to a separate “disturbance” involving her and others at the hotel.
Ivey said of Cutler, “Oh, and to make matters worse, when she was taken into custody, she feigned having a heart attack, and had to be, by policy, transported to a nearby hospital for evaluation.”
Sheriff Ivey is seen on video escorting Cutler into the Brevard County Jail, where he tells her, “Hope you enjoyed your time at the beach because you’re not going to be going back.”
Cutler replies, “What is the purpose of that?”
The sheriff fires back, “A woman is dead, and two dogs are about to be euthanized because of your uselessness.”
The Brevard County Sheriff’s Office said the dogs are expected to be euthanized.
When asked if Smith would ever forgive Cutler, he said, “I’ll have to think about that one. I’m not vindictive towards her. I don’t want anything evil happening to her, but to forgive her is gonna take a little work.”
The Melbourne Police Department and the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to Blaze News’ requests for comment.
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