INDIANAPOLIS -- Police are looking for a woman and a missing pit bull, one of three that mauled a woman on Indianapolis' south side Wednesday, investigators said.

Heather Paugh, 30, was attacked at about 11:30 a.m. as she went to pick up her mail at her home in the 3000 block of South State Avenue, Indianapolis police said.

"She had a big chunk taken out of her left forearm, it was all the way down to the bone, and she had multiple punctures and lacerations to both legs," said Lt. Jerry Bippus with Animal Care and Control.

Paugh was being treated Thursday at St. Francis Hospital for numerous bites. She told 6News' Jack Rinehart that the attack "lasted just a couple of minutes, but felt like a lifetime."

Police said the dogs escaped through an open window of a neighbor's home, got underneath a fence and ran wild.

Another person inside the victim's home saw the attack and set loose a Rottweiler in hopes that it would break up the attack. The Rottweiler did help stop the attack, but was also mauled and later had to be euthanized.

"We ran over there and we did our best to try and break it up, but they was just too vicious," said neighbor Michael Walters. "We really couldn't really get into the yard to save the dog."

Police were unable to get close to the pit bulls, so officers shot and killed two of them. The other animal escaped and is still being sought.

Animal Care and Control officers hailed the Rottweiler as a hero and said the woman may have suffered a far worse fate had that animal not intervened.

Police think the victim's neighbor, a woman whose identity wasn't immediately released, was using the home to house the three pit bulls involved in the attack and three more, but wasn't living in the home, which was covered with feces and filth, according to a police report.

The owner is expected to face civil and criminal charges stemming from the attack.

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