In an uncommon appeal, an unique magistrate today verified Palm Coast Animal Control’s choice to designate Ghost, a big pit bull mix, a hazardous dog following the dog’s attack on the 13-year-old woman who was walking him on an R-Section street on June 5.
Dangerous dog classifications are extremely pricey and limiting on dog owners, totaling up to a form of irreversible probation for the dog, with a Damocles sword set to cut the dog’s life brief ought to the dog reoffend. But the problem a city government need to satisfy to enforce the classification is high, and depends upon incontrovertible evidence of serious injuries to victims (consisting of animals) or unprovoked, wanton attacks. There was no doubt that the city fulfilled that problem in Ghost’s case.
“The 13 year old was attacked, honestly, quite gruesomely, with many, many attacks, many, many sutures,” Special Magistrate Stephen Mistoler informed the dog’s owners as he revealed his judgment after a 70-minute hearing at City Hall, keeping in mind the existence of a 2-year-old kid in the exact same household. “I really dread the idea of anything horrible happening to that really young, 2-year-old child.”
Ghost is an approximately 2-year-old male pit bull his owners breed and require to dog programs–a practice that will need to end with the dangerous-dog classification. Any dog that has actually strongly bitten, assaulted or triggered serious injury to a human being on public or personal property might be considered hazardous. A 2nd offense would cause the dog’s damage.
Ghost’s owners and the woman’s moms and dads, Jimmie Robinson II and Tenille Payne, had actually appealed the city’s choice, leading to today’s hearing prior to Stephen Mistoler, the magistrate. The hearing resembled a trial, with the city’s lawyer, Jennifer Nix, making the city’s case, and questioning witnesses.
Robinson and Payne represented themselves, with little familiarity with hearing treatments, putting them at a drawback from the beginning. But the case did not appear to have uncertainties, the dog’s owners did not object to the acts of the case, just a few of their analysis, and their legal case amounted to contentions that might not withstand the city’s proof: nobody understands why the dog assaulted, and it might have been much even worse.
Remarkably, the couple minimized the intensity of the attack in spite of troubling images that revealed their child scarred, punctured, lacerated and scratched on her arms, her legs, her feet, her back and among her hands, with 8 to 10 of the areas needing stitches.
“It wasn’t an aggressive bite, he was just playing around,” Robinson said, otherwise “she would have been more torn apart.”
The event occurred beyond 8 Ryall lane in Palm Coast at 1 a.m. on June 5, when the couple’s child, Danielle (the name has actually been altered), chose to walk Ghost, though she never ever has and never ever does, according to her moms and dads. Payne was asleep on the sofa at the time. “She decided to walk the dog on her own at 1 a.m., I didn’t even know she went outside,” she said.
Danielle, who was not in the hearing room, had actually never ever strolled the dog prior to. Payne heard her child screams, as did next-door neighbors. Neighbors called 911. Ghost had actually subdued Danielle, tossing her to the ground and assaulting her consistently.
There is no proof that the attack was provoked, the Animal Control officer who examined the case for the city, Heather Priestap, concluded, and reiterated at the hearing.
“I feel that Ghost attacked with no warning and kept attacking, and I know from my opinion it sounds like she was rolling around, trying to get away and she was screaming,” Precept said. “There are other children in the house as well. With an unprovoked attack, it’s hard to tell when they will attack.”
Ghost was taken at the Humane Society, as needed by law when a dog has actually triggered a serious injury, pending the result of the examination. At the Humane Society, a kennel employee was once again bitten by Ghost while walking him, triggering a bleeding laceration. The city made much of that 2nd bite in its case today, mentioning it as factor enough to have actually called for a suggestion to euthanize the dog.
Mistoler, the magistrate didn’t put as much weight on the 2nd bite: he was worried about the humane Society victim’s affidavit, which explained an understaffed operation. “‘I wasn’t supposed to be working this day, I was supposed to be off today,’” the magistrate checked out from the affidavit. “Maybe there’s a little bit more going on at the shelter with staffing. So I’m not really going to consider this so heavily, the second bite that we have.” Had he done so, Ghost’s fate may have been promoted.
So the magistrate concentrated on the truths and effects of the June 5 attack, as provided by Jennifer Nix, the city’s lawyer on the case. The magistrate was possibly shocked by the dog owners’ testaments.
Robinson, when he appealed the case, argued in his appeal that Danielle does not feel that the dog hurt her and is not scared of Ghost.
“You’re aware he harmed her?” Nix asked him.
“Yes,” he said.
“Did you see her injuries?”
“Yes,” Robinson said. “She says she didn’t feel he harmed her.”
“You’re aware there are stitches in multiple places.”
“Yes.” Robinson said the dog was biting her however in a lively instead of aggressive method.
“Do you consider this to be a serious injury?” Nix asked him, describing the images.
“She’s fine now,” he said, minimizing the injuries, which he said did not go to the bone, for instance.
“Do you feel that it would have to be that severe for you to think it’s problematic?” Nix asked him.
“I don’t feel like that,” Robinson said, “but I feel like it was one incident that occurred, and I feel like, how can you just determine that he’s dangerous on one incident? There’s no one else in the public that he bit or anybody else walking down the street.” Ghost has actually been to a number of dog programs without biting anybody, Robinson said. He did not see why that specific bite was singled out as calling for the hazardous dog classification, “just because of one incident.”
Payne’s testament was not that much various, though she appeared a bit more worried about the injuries. “We can’t say what happened, we weren’t there,” Payne said.
“What do you think is going on here, that the dog preemptively acts like this?” Nix asked her.
“I don’t know what happened I wasn’t there,” Payne said.
“So as far as you understand it wasn’t though your daughter was tormenting or abusing or assaulting the dog,” the lawyer asked.
“I’m not sure what she was doing out there. She’s not going to tell that if she was,” Payne said.
But already it was truly a one-sided case, the magistrate’s choice all however specific. Nix did not slow down in her closing argument, representing the city as merciful sufficient not to look for the death of the dog, though under the law it would have been entitled to do so. “That is an aggressive dog,” she said, after once again summing up the level of the injuries that early morning. “There’s no evidence that the victim provoked Ghost.”
Robinson and Payne decreased to place on witnesses of their own, or to present closing arguments. Perhaps they understood the fight lost, their body movement–plunged, deflated right after they took a seat at the start of the hearing–recommending that they understood it lost minutes into the appeal.
Clearly, nevertheless, the magistrate was not out for blood, looking for a tempered judgment that showed the intensity of the attack, paid for Ghost another opportunity, and enforced the sort of limitations that would, presuming they are abided by, make sure safety for the dog’s entourage.
Ghost will need to be disinfected, it’ll need to be kenneled or otherwise muzzled even in your house, if kids under 18 exist, and will need to follow a series of other procedures to adhere to the dangerous-dog classification: it’ll need to be tattooed with the classification, his owners’ property will need to show indications at all points of entry suggesting the existence of a hazardous dog, his owners will need to purchase $100,000 worth of liability insurance coverage if Ghost were to trigger damage or injury once again, and so on. They will likewise owe $300 to the Humane Society–and will not get Ghost back till he will have been disinfected.
Ghost’s owners have the right of appeal–not to the Palm Coast City Council, which, like all city governments, fears the no-win politics of these cases, however to circuit court.
