Omaha, NE - From her hospital bed, a woman shares her story of saving a boy from a pit bull! The attack happened Saturday night near 14th and Sherwood.  Joyce Haynes bravely put herself between the female pit bull and a 9-year-old boy.

The dog viciously attacked her leg.  Animal control will put-down that pit bull.  Joyce Haynes says it was just the right thing to do. She'll be laid up for weeks but the good news is doctors won't have to amputate her leg like she says they feared early on.

A gaping hole in her left calf; Joyce Haynes won't be able to walk for weeks. "I said oh my gosh! He's killing me, he's killing me!" Joyce Haynes said.

A vicious dog first goes after a young boy.  Joyce hears the 9-year-old's screams and takes action, putting her body in front of the boy.  But the pit bull goes on the attack a second time. "I said hey to the dog, just like that, I didn't scream or nothing. Hey and the dog just turned around and looked at me and just started charging," Haynes said.

Charging turned into chomping. The pit bull pounced, biting the 52-year-old victim's legs repeatedly. Joyce Haynes remembers looking at the muscle and skin from her injury dangle outside the back of her leg. "I tell yea, I was so scared and I thought I was going to die," she said.

Possibly die for a total stranger?  Joyce says it's the right thing to do.  Something she would do again if she had to. "A little boy, a little girl, it wouldn't have mattered. Even an adult I would have went in to try to save them," she said.

The boy Joyce saved got to personally tell her thank you on the phone today. She will have to have another skin-graph before being released out of the hospital.

Posted by: Reporter, Erika Summers, esummers@action3news.com