More than 17,000 people are attacked by dogs in Ohio a year badly enough that they require medical attention or police intervention. But those are just the cases that are reported.
Vicious: How Ohio laws fail dog attack victims | Documentary
Ohio law allows vicious dogs to kill twice before they’re required to be put down. Hear the stories of dog attack victims and their calls for changes.
Nightmarish dog attacks like the ones that claimed the lives of 73-year-old Jo Ann Echelbarger of Ashville in October and 57-year-old Dayton resident Klonda Richey in 2014 grab headlines.
But these are much more than simple tragedies.
Ohio’s ineffective dog laws failed them and many unseen Ohioans lucky enough to survive a mauling. Many of those who do survive require years of surgeries, battle PTSD and rack up huge medical bills.
As a recent investigation the USA TODAY Network Ohio revealed our current dangerous dog law sides with irresponsible dog owners and even allows vicious dogs “one free kill” of a person.
The law only mandates a dog be euthanized if it kills a second person.
In those cases, the owner may face a fourth-degree felony.
In most other cases—Echelbarger’s included—prosecutors must climb mountains to get to felony charges.
Fixes like those promised by a Licking County lawmaker are long overdue but are still insufficient to protect Ohioans.
The investigation by journalists from The Columbus Dispatch, The Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal, and The Canton Repository found that penalties for the owners of vicious dogs who attack are rarely more than the fee you’d pay for a speeding ticket. And there is little appetite to increase them.
The victims could be anyone.
A little girl, a cyclist and a guitar player
More than 17,000 people are attacked by dogs in Ohio a year badly enough that they require medical attention or police intervention. But those are just the cases that are reported. There is no way to know how many of those attacks are minor or how many are severe. That should change.
We do know that the most serious cases leave victims permanently disfigured and traumatized.
Alarming failures of Ohio’s laws mean unprovoked dogs of any breed can do any of the following with few legal consequences for their owners:
- Mutilate an 11-year-old’s face so badly that a first-responder can’t tell that she is a little girl.
- Devour a cyclist’s legs, leaving her without a limb but with medical bills in excess of $1 million.
- Rob a machinist and guitarist of his ears, thumbs index finger and feeling of personal safety outside of his own four walls.
These stories are not hyperbole.
The newspapers’ investigation details the terror faced by Columbus residents Avery Russell, the little girl, and cyclist Eva Simons, Michael Palmer of Green, a guitar player, and others.
Their attacks could have been avoided if Ohio laws were stronger. The laws must be strengthened to make sure the horrors they experienced are not visited upon others here.
A cat owner who sought protection
In wake of the newspapers’ special report, Rep. Kevin Miller, R-Newark, is working on legislation that would give dog wardens more tools and require euthanasia for dogs that kill or seriously injure people.
Sadly, but understandably, Miller told the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau that he was hesitant to increase criminal penalties.
The push for an increased penalty was among the sticking points more than a decade ago when Republican Bill Beagle, then a state lawmaker, and five others introduced reforms after two mixed-Mastiff dogs owned by a neighbor savagely attacked Klonda Richey in her front yard while she took out her garbage.
Richey, who had complained about the dogs to the Montgomery County dog warden, sought a protection order and installed a fence hoping it would keep herself and her cats safe. Her efforts were not enough.
Richey’s ravaged bloody body was found in the snow in front of her house.
Andrew Nason and Julie Custer, the couple who owned the dogs, were sentenced to five months in jail and a $500 fine and three months in jail and a $200 fine for failure to control dogs charges.
A little boy
The law should side with victims and not those who do not fulfill the responsibilities of pet ownership.
Ohio lawmakers rightly rewrote the law more than a dozen years ago, putting the focus on “the deed, not the breed” of canine. Doing so inadvertently left loopholes that leave Ohioans vulnerable to vicious dogs and their owners.
More must be done.
As recommended by the Ohio County Dog Wardens Association, the state should create a public database of dangerous dog registrations and felony animal abuse and establish training standards for all dog wardens.
Ohio law should also give prosecutors more leeway to seek felony charges in cases of severe injuries, especially when there is proof owners knew dogs were aggressive.
It has not yet been adjudicated, but Oscar Koon‘s tragic case shows how absurd penalties for dog owners are in Ohio — particularly when it comes to children.
On March 2, mere days after reporting for the newspapers’ investigation was complete, the 8-year-old was critically injured by two dogs near his family’s Columbus home. The two pit bulls also attacked another dog and lunged at a neighbor seen on body camera footage swinging a shovel to fend them away as police arrived.
Oscar sustained severe injuries to his face and arms in the attack and is expected to need reconstructive surgery and physical and mental therapy.
“The kid’s messed up bad,” an officer who shot one of the dogs says on body cam footage. “They threw him in a cruiser and took him to Children’s.”
Records show that Franklin County Animal Care and Control investigated a June 22 dog-biting incident at the dog owner’s home.
Three dogs — a dog named Luna and two that resemble dogs attacking Oscar Koon in body camera footage included — allegedly jumped a fence and began fighting a man’s dog.
According to records, Luna bit the man’s hand as he tried to break up the fight. Luna was designated as a dangerous dog but records show charges against her owner were dropped.
City Attorney Zach Klein spokesman Pete Shipley told The Dispatch this office did not proceed with that case because the injured man, a resident of a different state, didn’t appear in court.
In the attack involving Oscar, the Columbus City Attorney’s Office has filed misdemeanor charges against the dogs’ owner:
- Failure to keep a dangerous dog confined or restrained
- Failure to confine a dangerous dog
- Failure to register a dangerous dog and display the registration tag on the collar
- Two counts of failure to vaccinate for rabies
- Two counts of failure to confine a dog
- Three counts of failure to register a dog
If the city attorney’s office proves its case, the maximum penalties — 30 days in jail and fines of up to $250 for the two dangerous dog charges and a fine of $25 to $100 for failure to confine a dog — are insults to justice considering the harm done to Oscar that has changed his life forever.
A gardener
There is an extremely high bar to set to reach before a dog mauling case becomes a felony.
That was clear in Jo Ann Echelbarger’s death by her neighbors’ dogs as she gardened in the space between their condos. Her husband Stanley, 84 and suffering from Parkinson’s disease, could only watch from the screen door as his wife was killed.
The dogs were known terrors in the Ashville neighborhood.
A year before Echelbarger was mauled, Apollo, one of the dogs owned by mother and son Susan and Adam Withers attacked neighbor Kimberlee Black and shook Nemo, a goldendoodle puppy, like a “ragdoll.” Injuries were so severe that he had to be put down.
The dog warden designated Apollo as a dangerous dog, which triggered additional requirements for the Withers.
That designation and documented history became important a year later when Echelbarger was killed.
It allowed prosecutors to pursue a fourth-degree felony charge of failure to control a dangerous or vicious dog and felony involuntary manslaughter charges.
Police video reveals new details in dog mauling of Jo Echelbarger
An Ashville police officer who responded to a fatal dog attack on Jo Echelbarger, 73, asked multiple times if he should shoot the dog, video shows.
During the trial, prosecutors had to convince jurors that the Withers were guilty of the dog law violation, which was a predicate offense for the involuntary manslaughter charge. The two charges went hand-in-hand.
If jurors weren’t convinced the Withers had violated the dangerous dog law, they wouldn’t been able to convict them on manslaughter as well.
It’s an example of how tricky it is to convict someone of a felony in a vicious dog attack case.
Echelbarger’s adult children place blame on the system for her preventable death. They are right.
“I want accountability for everyone that was reckless in this situation. And I want my mom’s death to mean something,” Earlene Romine told journalists from our newspapers. “I want it to help the community so that this doesn’t happen to somebody else. This can never happen again. This is the most horrific thing that a person could go through, especially such a beautiful, wonderful person as my mom.”
Lawmakers have it in their power to save lives and reduce the likelihood that Ohioans will have to deal with the dire ramifications of vicious dog attacks.
The laws must put the safety of innocent people and pets above vicious dogs and their reckless owners.
It is not a question of if a vicious dog will attack again, it is when and which one of us will fall victim to these glaring inadequacies in Ohio law.
This editorial was written by Dispatch Opinion and Community Engagement Editor Amelia Robinson on behalf of the editorial board of The Columbus Dispatch, The Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal, and The Canton Repository. Editorials are fact-based assessments of issues of importance to the communities we serve. These are not the opinions of our reporting staff members, who strive for neutrality in their reporting.
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