NEBRASKA -- A DeWitt teenager was the victim of a pit bull attack in Beatrice Tuesday night.
Police Capt. Gerald Lamkin said a 17 year-old male was playing with the dog in a residence in the 200 block of South Seventh Street near midnight when witnesses say the animal became aggressive and attacked.
“A bunch of teenagers at a residence were playing around with the dog and wrestling with it,” Lamkin said. “Then, all of a sudden, the dog got aggressive. One youth got scared and started to leave. The dog then went after this individual and tackled him.”
Lamkin said the victim was transported to a Lincoln hospital for injuries primarily to the head, including having a piece of an ear bitten off.
The dog was taken to the animal shelter, where it will face a 10 day quarantine.
City Attorney Tobias Tempelmeyer said the dog’s owner may file an appeal to prevent the pet being declared dangerous or potentially dangerous.
The name of the dog’s owner has not been released as no charges have been filed at this time.
“If (the dog is) declared not dangerous, it will be released to the owner,” Tempelmeyer said. “If it’s declared dangerous or potentially dangerous, the owner will have to meet requirements to get it back.
“There’s also a provision that if Chief Bruce Lang feels the animal is not safe to return back to public, he can order it put down.”
Tempelmeyer said potential charges against the pit bull’s owner could range from nuisance dog to dog at large.
A potentially dangerous animal is as an animal that, when unprovoked, inflicts a wound on a human or a domestic animal or chases a person on public grounds with aggressive or dangerous behavior.
A dangerous animal is one that has killed or inflicted severe injury on a human being, killed a domestic animal without provocation while off the owner’s property, has previously been determined to be dangerous and subsequently bites, attacks or endangers humans or domestic animals.
The attack comes less than three months after a highly-debated animal ordinance was approved by the Beatrice City Council.
The council voted to remove controversial wording before passing the ordinance that would have automatically declared pit bulls as dangerous animals.
The decision to remove the breed-specific wording came at the council’s April 18 meeting, which came down to a tie-breaking vote from Mayor Dennis Schuster, following a split with council members Calvin Carey, Alan Fetty, Allen Langdale and Erich Tiemann supporting the amendment to remove the wording, while council members Jason Schmale, Jason Moore, David “Pede” Catlin and Dwight Parde were opposed to the amendment.
Before casting the tie-breaking vote to remove pit bull wording, Schuster explained his reasoning for removing the pit bull specific wording.
“We’re making a law here to regulate people, not animals,” Schuster said in April. “It’s people that behave irresponsibly with animals, no differently than people can behave irresponsibly with cars or motorcycles.”
(Beatrice Daily Sun - July 8, 2011)
