Effingham County Superior Court Chief Judge William E. Woodrum Jr. said he will visit the pit bull Kno in the county animal shelter and will decide within the next 10 days if the dog should live or die.
Elizabeth Pavlis, attorney for Effingham County, argued during a hearing Tuesday that the dog that attacked 5-year-old Wesley Frye on July 24, 2012, should be euthanized.
Mickey Kicklighter, a court-appointed attorney for the dog who is working for free, argued that the 3-year-old dog should go to a shelter in New York State, where he will be kept away from children and will not be adopted to a family.
Those are stipulations that the boy’s family originally suggested. But Melissa Frye told the judge Tuesday that she’s changed her mind. She said she thinks the dog that attacked her son should be euthanized so it can’t harm anyone else.
The boy and his 10-year-old brother had spent the night at a friend’s house across the street in the Paddleford Subdivision when the boy was attacked.
Frye said she wasn’t there at the time, but that she understands that her friend Julie Long had to pull the dog off of her son three times before she was able to end the attack.
She said her son touched the dog but that the attack was unprovoked.
Frye said her son was bitten on his cheek, chin and leg. She said he was flown to a Savannah hospital where he underwent eight hours of surgery.
She said her son had to re-learn how to walk and talk and will have facial paralysis the rest of his life. She said he has nightmares and whenever he sees any type of dog, “The State of California can hear him scream.”
The dog’s owners, the Longs, surrendered the dog to the county immediately after the attack and did not attend Tuesday’s hearing.
Kicklighter said he understands why the family would want the dog euthanized. “If this were my child, I’d probably want to shoot the dog myself,” he said.
He said he found a rescue center in South Kortright, N.Y., the Glen Wild Animal Rescue, that is willing to take the dog under the Frye family’s earlier stipulations.
Kicklighter said there were two reports about what happened that day – that the dog had a sore on its back that the boys were told to leave alone, but didn’t, and that the boys were screaming in the dog’s face.
The boys had just been warned to leave the dog alone, but, “Boys being boys, it’s like telling them not to jump in a puddle,” Kicklighter said.
He said the law doesn’t provide clear standards for the judge to make a decision.
Kicklighter said the rescue in New York has agreed to take the dog and someone else has volunteered to pay for the dog’s travel.
The dog has lived at the county animal shelter, in a 6-by-5-foot pen since the attack over a year ago.