Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 30, 1994 TAG: 9405300056
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELLISTON LENGTH: Medium
But the toddler's mother is just as insistent that Babs - who has bitten at least two and possibly three other children in slightly more than a year - should be destroyed.
"What's it going to do to the next child?" asked Donna Reed, who said the dog also nipped her right ankle and tore her shirt as she rescued her daughter from the May 15 attack at Hale's Trailer Park in Elliston.
Both Reed and the dog's owner, Audrey Scott, have been summoned to appear Tuesday in Montgomery County General District Court. The county is seeking a court order to kill the dog, which remains in custody at the county pound under the dangerous animal ordinance.
The incident has driven a wedge between Scott and Reed, who are next-door neighbors and were friends. It also has left Scott and her 10-year-old daughter, Courtney, feeling ostracized in the trailer park where they've lived since moving from Salem 10 months ago.
The county also has charged Scott with allowing her dog to run at large and with not having a dog license.
According to Reed, the dog attacked her daughter, Ashley, as she was getting on the family's swing set near Scott's trailer.
"The dog came over to her and grabbed her off the swing," said Reed, who was standing nearby but with her head turned away. Her two sons, 7 and 10 years old, did see the attack begin, she said.
Reed heard Ashley scream and ran to her. "My first instinct was to jerk her up," she said. When she did so, the dog "got really mad [and] went right into her head even worse."
At one point, she said, the dog was shaking Ashley by the head and trying to roll her onto her back. "She covered her face and hollered, `Mommy!' " Reed said.
She said she made a second grab and this time got Ashley in her arms. That's when the dog bit her ankle, Reed said.
Ashley received 16 stitches for two bite wounds to her head. She also has scratch marks on her chest. The stitches were removed last week.
Scott and Courtney have a different version of the incident.
Courtney, a fourth-grader at nearby Elliston-Lafayette Elementary School, said she witnessed the bites, which she said occurred beside a sliding door at the side of her mobile home, a few feet from the swing set. It started, Courtney said, when the little girl rushed up to her to give her a piece of candy.
Babs had escaped from her chain on the other side of the trailer earlier that evening; Courtney and her mother said they didn't know how the dog got loose but suspected someone unclipped her collar from the chain.
The dog moved toward Courtney at the same time the younger girl did. As Ashley approached, she "smacked" the dog on its side, Courtney said. In return, Courtney said, she pushed the little girl away.
At that moment, Babs attacked.
"I guess Babs thought [Ashley] was going to hurt me," Courtney said.
Courtney received Babs in 1992 as a Christmas gift, when the dog was a 4-week-old puppy.
Scott doesn't necessarily want the dog back, but also doesn't want to see her killed.
"I don't think she needs to be destroyed for something she thought she was doing right by protecting [Courtney]," Scott said. She said she knows of a chow enthusiast in the Roanoke area who might be willing to take Babs and keep her in a fenced-in pen to breed her.
Scott said she can't afford a lawyer to present her side in court, so she'll take a day off from work to do it herself.
Scott said she was aware that Babs bit two other children. The first time was in Salem around Easter of 1993, when an 11-year-old neighborhood boy tried to take a plastic egg away from Babs because he was afraid she would choke on it. The dog nipped him on the leg, Scott said.
In October, Babs bit a friend of Courtney's who tried to pet the dog as she was eating. "Babs thought she was going to take her food," Courtney said.
Reed said the dog also bit her younger son last summer. But Scott said she hadn't heard of that incident until Reed was quoted about it in the Roanoke Times & World-News.
County Attorney Roy Thorpe cited the October attack in the petition seeking the dog's death. Scott "has allowed her dog to run at large, the events of [May 15] not being the first instance that this dog has acted viciously, therefore giving the defendant notice of the dog's propensity to attack and the threat to the public," Thorpe wrote.
Reed said Ashley is afraid to play in her own yard now and has been a fitful sleeper since the attack.
by CNB