PINE TOWNSHIP | A Pine Township man who was being mauled by his own dog yelled for someone to kill the dog, so a neighbor shot the dog several times in the head and killed it, Porter County police said.

The shooting occurred about 5 p.m. Monday in the 1600 block of California Avenue.

The owner of the dog, California Avenue resident Jonah Krueger, 23, was taken to a hospital for treatment of hand and foot injuries, police said. The dead dog, a pit bull, was taken by Animal Control.

Krueger told police the attack occurred when he let his pit bull outside in the front yard. He told police the dog ran across the street toward another dog. He told police he didn't want his dog to attack the other dog, so he ran across the street to stop it. But Krueger said his own dog began attacking him.

A neighbor, Daniel Simpson, saw the attack and heard Krueger yelling for someone to shoot the dog, police said. Police said Simpson grabbed a .22-caliber rifle and shot the dog in the head several times. Simpson told police he shot the dog because nobody could get it to stop attacking its owner.

Police said that before the dog was shot, neighbor Nicholas Martin grabbed a rock and hit the dog in the head, but that failed to stop the attack. Another neighbor, Steven Ruess, hit the dog over the head with a flashlight, but was forced to run and jump over a fence after the dog turned on him.

Police said the dog had recently attacked its owner's wife, causing a foot injury.

Although the pit bull was killed, the dog it originally ran after was grabbed by its owner and taken inside.