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| Donald Moore |
The soft-spoken 13-year-old said he'll never forget the ordeal.
"No, because of the scar on my neck," Ryan Fuller said outside the courtroom.
A jury found Donald Moore, 35, guilty of felonious assault and failure to confine a vicious dog for an attack on May 9, 2010. His pit bull broke free of its leash and tether and clamped its jaws on Fuller's neck in front of 319 S. Powell Ave.
The boy testified about the incident this week, saying he thought he was going to die.
A neighbor used a butcher knife to stab the pit bull, named Caine, when no one else could get the dog to release the boy, who was 12 at the time. The dog was later euthanized.
Fuller spent several hours in surgery and required weeks of physical therapy to regain movement in his neck.
The jury also convicted Moore of failure to confine a vicious dog in an attack by the same pit bull on Lori Tapia, 41, on S. Eureka Avenue on Oct. 5, 2009. However, the jury found him not guilty of felonious assault in that case.
Jurors also heard testimony about the pit bull roaming loose and attacking a dog being walked by its owner on Wrexham Avenue on Feb. 23, 2010.
Moore faces as many as 11years in prison when he is sentenced Aug. 25 by Judge Laurel A. Beatty. If the judge determines that Moore qualifies as a repeat violent offender because of a 2001 burglary conviction in Pickaway County, she could add as many as 10 years to his sentence.
Ryan Fuller's mother, Angela Fuller, said Moore should receive the maximum sentence.
"He had the chance to have the dog put down after the first attack and after the second attack," she said.
Assistant Prosecutor Laurie Arsenault told jurors in closing arguments on Thursday that Moore knew that his dog was "a ticking time bomb" but still failed to properly confine him. Ohio law defines pit bulls as vicious animals and imposes strict requirements about how they must be confined by their owners and keepers.
Defense attorney Crysta Pennington argued that no evidence was presented to establish that Moore was the person responsible for improperly confining the dog in either attack.
Testimony showed that the attack on Tapia occurred when Moore's girlfriend let the dog out of their house while Moore was fighting with Tapia's teenage son on the front lawn. One witness testified that Moore ordered the dog to "attack, attack" before the dog bit Tapia's face.
It was unclear why the jury acquitted Moore of felonious assault in that attack. None of the jurors, who deliberated for about an hour, would comment as they left the courthouse.
Tapia, whose face was permanently scarred in the attack, testified during the trial but was not in the courtroom for the verdicts.
The not-guilty verdict was the first of the jury's findings read aloud by the judge, and it prompted Moore to begin crying. He turned grim-faced as the guilty verdicts were announced on the other three counts.
Ryan and his mother hugged after listening to the verdicts.
"I couldn't be happier," Angela Fuller said afterward. "I'm so happy (the jury) understood the severity of what happened."
Before the trial started, prosecutors dismissed an animal-cruelty charge that alleged Moore drugged the dog with cocaine. Prosecutor Ron O'Brien said the amount of cocaine found in the dog's system was "minimal," and a witness who said Moore admitted rubbing cocaine on the dog's gums did not show up to testify.
The Ohio General Assembly is considering legislation that would remove the "vicious" label from the pit bull breed.
(Columbus Dispatch - July 9, 2011)
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