The family of a 73-year-old Ashville woman who was killed by two dogs in October is suing the dogs’ owners, as well as the Pickaway County Dog Shelter, Pickaway County dog warden and The Reserve at Ashton Village condominium association, where the dogs’ owners lived.
In February, a jury found 62-year-old Susan Withers and her son, 35-year-old Adam Withers, guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal dog attack of Jo Ann Echelbarger. The Withers are being held in the Pickaway County Jail while they await sentencing.
Echelbarger was the Withers’ neighbor in Ashville when the Withers’ two pit bull terriers, Apollo and Echo, attacked her while she was gardening.
Police shot and killed the dogs during the attack.
The wrongful death civil lawsuit filed in Pickaway County Common Pleas Court alleges that the Withers’ dogs had “terrorized the community for years” and that the owners allowed them to roam free.
The suit seeks more than $25,000 in damages.
The complaint goes on to say that Echelbarger and her husband moved into the private condo community in June 2024 and that they were not warned about the Withers’ dogs.
The suit says one pit bull had been declared a “dangerous dog” a year before and claims that both the condo management and the Pickaway County Dog Warden’s Office should have known that the dogs posed a risk.
“Management defendants were aware that Susan and Adam Withers were unable to safely own and control dogs in common areas…as early as February 2015 and sent the Withers warnings to keep their dogs leashed when outside their residence,” the suit reads.
The document lists further warnings from the condo association in May 2017; Sept. 2020; April, May, and June of 2021; and March 2022. It reports that one pit bull attacked a visitor in Oct. 2023 and the other bit a visitor the following May. In September, condo management got a court order to remove the two dogs, but the lawsuit alleges that management never followed through.
“As a result, Jo Ann was attacked and killed more than a month later,” the suit states.
The suit also claims that the Pickaway County dog wardens were “untrained, improperly trained, improperly supervised, and improperly retained to the point where the dog wardens were incapable of performing their duties in a non-reckless manner,” and that wardens didn’t enforce dangerous dog requirements for the Withers’ pit bulls.
Three weeks before Echelbarger was attacked, police were called to the condo community because the two pit bulls had ingested cocaine, according to the lawsuit.
The suit also claims the dog wardens refused to come help police.
“This lawsuit seeks accountability and aims to drive systemic changes to prevent future tragedies,” wrote Cooper Elliott, the law firm that filed the suit, in a statement.
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