A man has died after being savaged by his dog while being interviewed by a BBC documentary film crew in north London.
The man, named locally as Mario Perivoitos, 41, was with the film crew at his home in Wood Green on 20 March when his Staffordshire bull terrier attacked, biting him in the neck.
The crew called an ambulance shortly before 10.30pm and the man was taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead two hours later, the Metropolitan police confirmed.
The crew has not been identified and the BBC declined to say what the documentary was about. The police said it was “entirely unrelated to the Met’s BBC documentary”, referring to the series The Met: Policing London, the second series of which has recently finished filming.
The reporters, a man in his 20s and a woman in her 30s, were interviewed under caution at a London police station earlier this week, the police said, because the property had been subjected to a temporary closure order.
The order prevented anyone but the occupier entering for three months and was intended to stop people taking drugs or otherwise engaging in anti-social behaviour on the premises. The crew were released after police ascertained that they “were not there for those purposes and therefore it would not be in the public interest to pursue the matter further.”
Neighbours in the block said Perivoitos was believed to have lived in the building for more than 20 years. Geoff Morgan, 52, who was home at the time, heard a commotion coming from a flat below him. He said: “I heard shouting – ‘Get him off! Get him off me!’
“He was shouting really loudly. He was bleeding from his neck. There was a lot of blood.”
A neighbour who gave his name as Tayfun said the dog had previously attacked Perivoitos. “There were one or two previous occasions when the dog attacked,” he said. “Six or seven months ago the dog bit him on the leg. We heard him shout at the dog and he came running out with blood on his leg.”
Despite this, he said Mario “loved the dog more than himself.” He said the dog was generally quiet, adding: “I never saw the dog be vicious.”
The dog was seized and is in secure kennels. Staffordshire bull terriers are not a banned breed under the Dangerous Dogs Act.
A postmortem examination carried out last Friday in Haringey gave the cause of death as hypovolemic shock – a condition caused by massive blood loss – and damage to the airway consistent with a dog bite.
The BBC said: “A crew making a BBC documentary were present – but not filming – at the time of the incident and called an ambulance. Given the ongoing inquiries, it would not be appropriate to comment further.”
The Met said: “A film crew making a documentary were present during the incident and called the London ambulance service. They are assisting police with their inquiries as officers prepare a report for the coroner.”
Perivoitos’s death is not being treated as suspicious, and his next of kin have been informed. The family has lived in the home, which is owned by the council, since 1996.
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