“He said I was lucky he didn’t put a bullet in our dog,” King said.
Her neighbors say Champ, her four year old pit bull, attacked and bit a child who was walking home from the school bus. Animal control officers took Champ to the shelter, and King says it was wrong.
[The owner admits] Champ broke loose from the tie out ...
“Our Pit was only loose for maybe 4 minutes when I noticed, when I yelled for him he came right around the corner of the house in 2 seconds so he was in my yard not where they were saying he was,” tells Toni.
“The pictures they have do not consist of bite marks of a pit bull. I feel that they are using his breed as a discrimination,” she said.
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| "..the bite radius on this animal is different than the wounds on the victim." |
She spends hours online searching for support—posting YouTube videos and creating a Facebook page called “Save Champ.” The page has more than 900 likes and counting.
“We don’t want the media attention, we just want our dog back home where he’s safe,” she said.
But at the Aiken County Animal Shelter, head officer, Bobby Arthurs says Champ is safe, and now so is the neighborhood.
“The child was bitten by the dog, it broke the skin, so there was some injury to the child,” Arthurs said.
He says several neighborhood witnesses saw Champ attack, and it has nothing to do with his breed.
Whether or not Champ is freed is now up to a judge to decide, but still convinced this is discrimination, until then King says she will continue to look for support.
(WJBF - Feb 22, 2012)
