Paul Mazer and Tawny Denoewer were charged by the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office in the case. Both of them face charges of possessing a dangerous animal causing serious injuries, and Mazer faces added charges of resisting arrest and lying to a peace officer.
However, arguments made in court by defense attorneys cast doubt on whether the couple should have ever been charged in the case.
J. Henry Lievens, Mazer’s attorney, argued a Michigan Court of Appeals decision last year means Mazyer and Denoewer needed to be aware the pit bull — named Thor — was dangerous before the attack in order to be held criminally liable.
Testimony on Thursday showed Thor had no known prior incidents before the June 9 mauling in the 9200 block of Rawsonville Road.
“What happened was awful, but there is nothing today that shows the dog … ever attacked another person or a dog,” Lievens said.
District Court Judge J. Cedric Simpson reviewed the Court of Appeals ruling during a break in the case and said it appeared the court ruled a dog would get “one free bite” before being declared a dangerous dog.
If there's no evidence showing Thor had previously been declared dangerous by any authority, Mazer and Denoewer could be sued for civil liability over the incident — but they might be exempt from criminal liability.
The child’s grandmother, whom The Ann Arbor News is not naming because doing so could identify the juvenile victim, said the girl was helping her garden on the day of the attack. The grandmother was tending to plants, while the girl went into the backyard on her own to water plants.
The grandmother lives next door to Mazer and Denoewer and a fence separated the backyards of the homes. Testimony from Michigan State Police investigators showed Denoewer told them Thor got out of the house without a leash when the couple’s children were going into the backyard.
The grandmother said Thor saw the girl and jumped a chain-link fence and a privacy fence into her backyard. The dog then attacked the girl.
The grandmother said the dog attacked the then-4-year-old for about 30 seconds before the grandmother hit the dog with a piece of PVC pipe, causing Thor to release and back away.
“Her face was bleeding and she had some tears in her skin,” the grandmother testified.
The girl needed 28 stitches to close the cuts on her face and abdomen and has also undergone plastic surgery since the incident, the grandmother testified.
The grandmother said Denoewer was within arm’s reach of the dog when it went over the fence and did not make a concentrated effort to get the dog to stop attacking the girl. Denoewer told police she called out to the dog and was yelling at it during the attack.
The grandmother, who said she was intimated by the dog, said Thor often came to the fence and barked at her and her granddaughter. However, she testified she had never seen Thor attack anyone else before the June 9 incident.
The girl was taken to University of Michigan’s Mott Children’s Hospital for treatment. She is recovering from her injuries.
Mazer is being charged with assaulting, resisting or obstructing a police officer and lying to a peace officer for the same incident:
He told a responding trooper that Thor had run away before the incident and couldn’t have attacked the girl. In reality, the dog was locked in a bathroom at Mazer’s home when he was speaking to police.
On June 10, Thor was taken to the Humane Society of Huron Valley, where he remains.
The case is scheduled to resume at 11 a.m. on Oct. 23. Simpson said each attorney — Denoewer is being represented by Washtenaw County First Assistant Public Defender Timothy Niemann — would have to submit a written argument and he would make a decision at the hearing.
Reiser argued Mazer and Denoewer recognized Thor was a dangerous dog because they kept him on a cable in the backyard of their home. That notion was something Simpson rejected.
Niemann added that the prosecution seems to have not presented any sort of evidence showing that Mazer and Denoewer would have had a reason to believe Thor was dangerous before the incident, other than normal dog behavior such as barking.
“There is a specific notice required in the statute that has (not) been met in the case,” he said.
(MLive.com - Sept 26, 2014)
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