Pit Bull’s Owner Cited After 3-Year-Old Is Mauled

It took more than 30 stitches to mend 3-year-old Kayla Kunz’s torn scalp after she was mauled two weeks ago by a pit bull.

As the Spokane Valley girl recovered from the attack, Todd D. Bates, the dog’s owner, was cited on Thursday for three offenses: keeping a dog with vicious propensities, a misdemeanor; dog threatening a person; and not keeping the dog’s rabies shots current.

County animal control director Nancy Sattin deemed the squatty, brown dog dangerous after Bates’s mother turned it over to the animal shelter last Friday.

Three people offered differing accounts of the Jan. 14 attack on the girl.

After an investigion, Sattin decided to cite Bates.

Sattin said the attack occurred inside the Kunz family home while Bates was visiting. The 60-pound dog jumped the 3-year-old and clamped down on the top of her head with its jaws, Sattin said. Before Bates could free the girl from the dog’s clutches, it had ripped pieces of the girl’s scalp from her head, bit through her lip and bruised and scraped her face, Sattin said.

After the attack, Kayla was treated at Valley Hospital and Medical Center and released.

“(The attack) was horrible, but it could have been fatal,” Sattin said, adding that the girl’s wounds appear to be healing well.

Neither Kelly Kunz, the girl’s mother, nor Bates returned telephone calls seeking comment.

When interviewed at the hospital by a sheriff’s deputy, both Bates and Kelly Kunz said Kayla was attacked in her back yard when she tried to pet a strange dog.

Both said the dog ran off after the attack and that they did not know who owned it, according to the deputy’s report.

However, the next day Kunz told Sattin the dog belonged to Bates, that the attack happened in the house and that Bates was the only witness.

Kunz told Sattin she made the first story up because Bates threatened her.

A third version of the attack was offered by Bill Kemme, who answered the phone at Kunz’s house and said he lives there with her. Kemme said he and Bates and two other people were sitting in the den when the dog bolted across the room and attacked Kayla.

“She was laying on the ground hiding her head,” Kemme said.

Sattin said Bates told her he does not plan to appeal the dangerous-dog ruling, but that he had vowed to retrieve his dog with or without her approval.

Several sheriff’s deputies were called to the animal shelter Wednesday afternoon to calm Bates when he showed up and demanded that Sattin return his dog.

“He told me on the phone if somebody tries to do something to his dog somebody’s going to get hurt,” Sattin said.

Bates’s pit bull was deemed potentially dangerous last March after it charged after a North Side woman.

The dog is being confined at the county animal shelter until Bates meets the criteria for keeping a dangerous dog, Sattin said.

Bates must build a fence and an enclosed kennel, post warning signs and get dangerous dog insurance before his dog will be returned.

, DataTimes