A Florida man died last Thursday, on the Fourth of July, after he was attacked by a pack of dogs that left more than 100 bites over his body, WFLA reports. 

Melvin Olds Jr., a 45-year-old father of five and native of Highlands County, took a shortcut through a wooded path but never came home, his family told the station. His fiancée, Jannell Ward, said she had seen several stray dogs in their neighborhood but had never gotten the feeling that the canines were at all aggressive. 

“They growled a couple times but they never ran up to me,” she said. “They never came at me or insinuated that they were going to bite me. I never got that feeling.”

An investigation conducted by the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office, a medical examiner and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, however, determined that some of the dogs may have been responsible for Olds’s death.

Police trapped six stray dogs — all pit bull mixes — and found that their bite sizes matched Olds’s wounds. No other injuries had been found on his body, making Olds’s death unusual, authorities said. 

“We do work bite cases,” Lt. Clay Kinslow told the station. “As far as a pack of dogs that attacked somebody, we don’t have many of those cases honestly.”

Though officials are still waiting for DNA results before making an official determination on Olds’s cause of death, his family told WFLA that they’re stunned by how he died. 

“I thought a dog was a man’s best friend,” said Cynthia Hill, Olds’s mother. “He was a good person, a good man. Just so hurt, deeply because it’s so unexpected.”

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