This will put a halt to large powerful dog ownership. If the threat of murder charges looms over an owner’s head who will have them?
Will this extend to any animal you own? How about your child?
A Georgia toddler’s grandmother is charged with murder after her two pit bulls mauled the child to death, according to Hart County officials.
Deputy Coroner Scott Boleman said the 20-month-old boy was attacked in the backyard of a Highland Avenue home in Hartwell.
Police said the attack was reported at about 3:15 p.m. Tuesday.
“It was horrific,” Chief Anthony Davis, with the Hartwell Police Department, told WYFF.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said that the preliminary investigation found that Sandra Bowers Adams, 70, the child’s grandmother, was babysitting the boy at her home. Adams told GBI agents that she and the toddler were outside, and when she tried go back inside the home, her pit bulls ran out the back door, knocking Adams to the ground and attacking the child.
Adams told the GBI she tried shield the child and tried to pull the dogs away from the boy. Adams was eventually able to get the dogs back into the house. She picked the boy up, drove to a nearby location and picked up the child’s mother and they drove to an urgent care center.
The GBI said Adams had been cited on multiple occasions by the Hartwell Police Department for having disorderly animals.
“We’ve answered calls at the residence in the past,” Davis said. “Loud dogs, barking dogs, dogs chasing someone — but never a bite.”
After extensive interviews with family members, an investigation by crime scene investigators and consulting with a district attorney, Adams was charged with second-degree murder, second-degree cruelty to children and felony involuntary manslaughter.
The dogs are kenneled in separate locations and will be observed for 24 to 48 hours before they are euthanized.
Adams is not considered a flight risk or threat, so her bond was set at $50,000 without formal a hearing. As of Wednesday afternoon, she remained in custody.
I had two huge pit bulls on my front porch about three years ago. They wouldn’t move.
Never saw them before. So I fed them raw hamburg with a lot of Valium in the meat.
3o mine later they were asleep. When I came home from work they were gone.
Never saw them again.
I carry a .357 magnum but I just can’t shoot a dog.
This woman had dogs that she had no idea how to control. If you have dogs that don’t listen to your commands its a recipe for trouble. The fact that they’re reporting the breed as pitbulls just adds to the sensationalism for the press. Other breeds have higher incidents of biting people but thats not news.
Good. CONSEQUENCES.
If dog owners don’t train their pets properly
(I’m ASSUMING it’s desirable to train a pet not to attack…
…we’re not talking about security animals),
they need to take responsibility for that choice.
BUT IT’S FOR THE CHILDREN!
Lock her ass up
If it had been a loaded gun left within reach of the toddler it would likely be negligent homicide, which is what this should be.
There are plenty of Pit owners who swear their baby is gentle as a lamb. That’s what the neighbor said after his killed our dog while the wife was beating it on the head with the leash ratchet and screaming.
And three are “moderate” muslims too. But the fact some are defective to their design doesn’t change the fact that both are designed to commit violence.
The dogs have documented history of aggression. They just hadn’t bit till now. The writing was on the wall something was going to happen.
Pit bulls are time bombs. They are always sweet, gentle little babies – right up until the point they maul somebody to death. There are plenty of other breeds out there. Most others show signs of aggression prior to an incident. If you think you have to have a pit bull to show all your friends how “cool” you are, then you need to be ready to pay the consequences for your stupidity.
Just another case yesterday in Hagerstown Maryland where a “pit bull mix” bit a young child on the face tearing skin and requiring the boy to be airlifted to a specialty surgical unit.
The dog had a history of killing other dogs and aggression.
It’s just like guns, some people can’t have them simply because they can’t be trusted with them. Responsible dog breeders put down dogs that are dangerous. If they can’t be trained or trust then give them a lethal dose of lead poisoning.
With this logic shouldn’t the child’s parents also be charged for placing the child into the care of the grandmother at her home where they knew she had unruly and potentially violent pit bulls? In my experience dog owners never clearly see the danger their dogs pose even when it is evident to anyone else so 2nd degree murder would seem a stretch anyway. That charge relies on both dangerous conduct AND a lack of concern for human life. Frankly the kids parents fit that bill more than the grandmother. I think people are crazy to have animals that express violent tendencies around anyone including themselves.
I owned a close relative of Pit Bulls, American Staffordshire Terrier. I waited until my youngest child was 7. Did my research on the breed, talked to breeders before I bought one. I had the complete lineage of the dog, it was bred as a show dog and temperament. The breeder I bought from would not sell the puppy to me until she interviewed me and my family (for an hour 1/2 and was assured it would be trained and properly socialized.
Beautiful, smartest, obedient, strongest, great around children, loving and most protective of our family that I have ever been blessed to own.
We lived 17 miles from town, our AmStaf was our first line of defense if anyone had broken in. Never had a problem in the years she was with us.
Every dog must know where they are in the family pack.
But again a reputable breeder, bred for temperament, trained and socialized.
She actually took the time to go pick up the child’s mother instead of heading directly and quickly to the Urgent Care Center (Also, what about calling 911)!
if you want to own a dog then be responsible for it.
Dogs are vermin. It’s about time the law started making people responsible for the damage their animals do.
We used to have a neighbor in the rental house next door with a pack of dogs, 5 or 6, I’m not even sure how many.
I asked them repeatedly to keep them under control. The last straw was when they broke through the fence into my back yard.
Once I shot the first two, the rest ran. And the assholes moved out the next week, AFTER trying to get me in trouble with the law.
Fortunately, the hole in the fence and the two dead dogs on *my* property told the story for me.
Dogs should be banned altogether. If you want a wild animal in your house, go buy a house in the middle of no where. Stop subjecting civilized people to your stupid fetish.
Don’t hate me, the child was black, the dogs were unaccustomed to him.
The Grandmother was a 70 yo white woman, she deserves jail, they seldom jail for just stupidity.
The murder charge is a stretch, not completely unjustified.
Story time.
I had a Rotty, adopted from the pound, days before he was to be put down, awesome animal.
He had been owned by a soldier who got deployed in the first Gulf War.
The attendant told me nobody had been able to control him, that’s because he spoke Deutsch.
Very well trained animal.
I kept him in a large pen, about a half acre. A neighbours dog would habitually piss in Thor’s face through the fence. I repeatedly admonished the old woman walking the dog without a leash and for allowing her dog to do that.
One day the dog came up to the fence, not knowing Thor was with me in the workshop.
Yep, it happened, the dog got his ass kicked. When Thor let him up he ran after the dog, toward the woman. Even with repeated blows from a stick Thor didn’t relent until I called him off.
The old hag came over to the fence after and harangued me for not going over and pulling the dog off.
I called her an idiot who has no business owning a dog. If I had gone over there, with her swinging a stick, in all probability she would have been attacked too.
Yeah, the sheriff showed up, lucky for me my neighbor had seen the whole thing and had heard me complain to the woman in the past about her incompetence regarding her dog.
Thor died of liver cancer, still miss him.
Dogs properly bred, raised, and trained (unlike humans) are a beautiful thing, not necessarily better than people, but very valuable.
Again as a former breeder/owner-shower of dogs (Basset Hounds and Cairn Terriers) I had to put several pups down I could have sold for money but didn’t because their dispositions weren’t right and couldn’t be trusted.
Responsible owners and breeders do this – we trust each other and the AKC to set and keep the standards for the breeds.
They also care about who gets the dogs.
Sadly most of the bad breeders in the US are people purely interested in money (like the Amish btw) who run kennels and sell to the unaffiliated pets stores and/or flea markets out there.
Be careful with your dog and you’ll have a joy – but don’t tolerate a bad tempered, dangerous dog.
The legal theory here is 2nd degree murder, not murder in the first. The idea is some circumstances leading to a homicide show such a “depraved indifference” to human health and well being that a manslaughter charge with a max of seven years prison time seems insufficient. In other words it goes beyond negligence to wanton recklessness — ie, absolutely anybody should know that you dont allow pit bulls around 2 year olds.
I’m guessing it wont fly in this case because the grandmother will probably plead diminished mental capacity. Now lets say someone kept pit bulls around to just so he could be the neighborhood badass and these animals killed his 2 year old kid. Different story
My ex-brother-in-law had a pit bull named Booger. He said Booger would never hurt a flea. Maybe not a flea, but as he and Booger sat in the back of his pick-up on the beach, Booger spotted a Belgian draft horse with a rider trotting along. Booger leapt from the truck and ran to the horse, jumped up and attached himself to the horses ass and hung on while thrashing around. The horse threw the rider and she was hurt. Redneck brother-in-law finally was able to beat Booger off the horse and grabbed him and left the scene before the police could show up. He was good at beating my sister, too. He’s lucky my father didn’t feed him to the gators.
They won’t get a conviction for murder. She should be charged with manslaughter.
A dog chews up a kid murder charges! A doctor chews up a kid adulation from the Democrats!
I’ve been carrying a gun for a long long time. I’ve only come close to pulling it one time and that was on a Pit Bull that was off a leash walking with his dirt bag owner. The owner thought it was funny until I told him his dog was about to die.
@Bad_Brad:
Had a neighbor who fancied hisself a dog trainer (with business cards and all) who supposedly trained German Shepards for k-9 purposes. One wouldn’t listen well and strayed off his reservation one day, got my little Katy-dog (Cairn Terrier who wouldn’t bruise a peach) in it’s mouth but by that time my 9mm was on it’s head and did the lead injection. Katy was okay but she needed a bath.
He tried to call the cops, sue, whatever but no one would take the case nor would the police even hassle me for discharging the weapon close to domiciliary buildings.
I still feel bad about it today but I will protect life if I can whenever I can. Dog owners need to be held accountable for the actions of their dogs.
The grandmother is too stupid to own big breed dogs. The dogs have a history of aggression and biting. She and the mother brought the child into proximity to two, self-propelled, self-firing, indirect fire weapons and they killed a child. It’s homicide of some degree.
I have and always have had dogs in the 45 to 80 lb. range. I’ve never, ever let them in proximity to a child under twelve. At various times over the decades I saw hunting dogs kill small dogs, suddenly, violently before I could stop them. I’ve stopped bloody fights between two 60 pounders by myself without being bitten. They would have killed each other. They are not allowed to show dog aggression in my presence.
I will not own a dog that has a history of human aggression no matter the reason. I will never let a dog see weakness (beating, yelling are weakness btw, I don’t do either), inconsistency or lack of absolute dominance by my family over it. That includes no food aggression, ever.
I’ve loved them all, but violating the human aggression rule results in immediate touch correction and down-stay, then followed by alpha-roll if it warrants. If I can’t get it corrected, consistently, the dog leaves the family. If it delivers a bite to any human, it’s gone, period.
That is the pack way. Humans have to know that, especially if they want to be large breed owners.
My guess she’s being charged because she never called 911, stopped to pick up Mom ( from where?) and then drove to Urgent Care, not the ER. Because she couldn’t control the dogs, she gets charged because of all of it.
My neighbors pit cornered me inside my garage. I was rooting thru the drop freezer & felt a presence. I am not afraid of dogs but this girl had been chained her entire life and I was stimuli. She was all bowed up. I postured & yelled at her repeatedly while advancing on her and she finally slunk away. Told the neighbor to get rid of the dog or I would shoot it. Dog was gone within a week.
They are animals. Treat them as such and you avoid all sorts of problems.
According to reports she had been cited previously for the dogs behavior, her
reckless behavior led to the child’s death, prosecute her.
Two attack attempts by an unfenced dog from a neighbor about a 1/2 block away. 1st I had a brush cutter and chased after it, second time I had a 2×4 sized club in my hand stirring a fire. Both times I postured up and screamed while advancing.
Now I’m only in the yard with boot daggers and a dragon’s tongue machete on me. You can goggle the dragon’s tongue machete. They are worth every dolla!
Our laws for too long have favor dangerous dog owners. You should be criminally held accountable for your dog’s actions no matter how it was raised. Hopefully the charges will stick and she sill be found guilty of murder.