Teen Needs 50 Stitches After a Stranger 'Sank His Teeth' into Her Face 'Like a Dog with a Toy'

Mar. 15, 2025

Ella Dowling before she was attacked on a bus.Photo:Ella Dowling / SWNS

Ella Dowling / SWNS

A teenager needed 50 stitches in her face after a stranger attacked her, biting her nose and mouth on a public bus.

“I noticed him when we got on the bus, he was strange," Dowling told South West News Service, viaThe Daily Mail.

Ella Dowling after a stranger bit her face.Ella Dowling / SWNS

He continued to harass the girls as they made their way to open seats, even though “we told him to leave us alone,” Dowling recalled.

When she sat down with her friends, the man suddenly attacked her, seemingly out of nowhere. But she couldn’t scream because he “had my lip in his mouth,” she said.

“‘It took my friends a few seconds to realize what he was doing and then they started screaming at him to get off me,” she said. “The pain was horrific and I could feel his whole body shaking — when I looked down at my clothes after they were covered in blood.”

“The pain I felt when he sank his teeth into my face is something which will stay with me forever,” Dowling told the outlet. “He was like adog with a toy; moving his head side to side.”

Dowling said she braced her hands around the back of his head to stop him from pulling back, explaining, “I knew if I didn’t, he would rip my lip and nose off completely.”

Ella Dowling before and after the attack.Ella Dowling / SWNS (2)

Ella Dowling / SWNS (2)

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She was taken to Cheltenham Hospital before being transferred to Gloucester Hospital where she underwent emergency surgery. She’s since undergone another two-and-a-half-hour reconstructive surgery, but is expected to have scars for life.

Now she is trying to learn to live with what happened.

“When I saw my face for the first time after the attack, I didn’t recognize my own reflection, and I couldn’t look in the mirror for months after that,” Dowling said, adding that she has PTSD from the incident. “I haven’t used the bus since,” she adds.

“If I leave the house, I have to be on the phone with my mum or a friend because I’m terrified that I’m going to be attacked again,” she told SWNS.

Her attacker was given a six-year jail sentence and a lifelong restraining order.

Ella Dowling lives with scars from the attack.Ella Dowling / SWNS

Dowling said she’s trying to return to the life she had before the attack, saying, “I’ve started university again this year and I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to continue.”

“People say that my scar is healing well but for me, it’s more than ascar,” she said. “it’s a disfigurement and a permanent reminder of what’s happened to me.”

“I smile and speak differently, which is something I’m going to have to learn to live with for the rest of my life.”

source: people.com