Searcy Animal Appeal Committee upholds decision for two pit bulls to be removed from city – Searcy Daily Citizen

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Updated: October 29, 2022 @ 12:15 am

Removing two pit bulls, including one that bit a juvenile on the face in August, from Searcy was unanimously upheld by the Animal Control Appeal Committee on Thursday.
The appeal hearing had been requested by the dogs’ owner, Kevin Whitney, according to Mayor Kyle Osborne, who presided over the meeting.
“We’ll have more peace walking around our neighborhood and for others especially,” the bite victim’s mother, Tisha Wilhite, said after the decision. “Not everybody is his [her son’s] shape and size and can’t protect their family in that situation. That was the main thing.”
According to the report from the Searcy Police Department, officers responded to a residence on West Academy Avenue on Aug. 25 around 8 p.m. regarding the pit bull attack. The two pit bulls reportedly ran past their owner, Whitney, 55, at the doorway when he was leaving his home. The report said the two pit bulls charged into the street toward the juvenile, his mother and their dogs. While attempting to separate the pit bulls from attacking their dogs, one of the pit bulls bit the juvenile on his face. The juvenile was taken by his mother to Unity Health-White County Medical Center Emergency Room for his injury.
Whitney was written a ticket for violation of city ordinance Sec. 6-21, Confinement; Requirements for Enclosure, Prohibition of Dogs in Certain Locations. The Searcy Police Department (Animal Control) ordered the pit bulls to be removed from the city.
“The reason why I did the appeal is because when this all happened I was getting my fence redone. My female dog was in heat,” Whitney said. “I went outside, me and my cousin, and the door didn’t latch all the way up and she pushed the door up and both of them came outside.
“I did not realize that it was outside until we turned around and looked and it was out there and then they had went to the backyard like they had normally done. Then we kept on talking and stuff and the next thing we heard was a lot of screaming and yelling. My dog doesn’t jump for one thing. The kid even said himself that he attacked my dog, and that’s what happened, he attacked my dog.”
City Attorney Buck Gibson asked Whitney, “Your testimony today is the child told you, he attacked your dog?” Whitney said, “Yes, to keep him from getting to his dogs, he attacked my dog, and in the report I put that in there and my cousin did as well.”
Gibson asked Whitney if his dog was licensed by the city of Searcy, and Whitney replied “yes sir.” Gibson also asked if the dog was chained at the premises. Whitney answered “It wasn’t at the time, no.”
“So your testimony is that you kept the dog in your home and that’s the secure enclosure?” Gibson asked. Whitney answered, “I keep it in my home and then the fence, once it got done in our backyard, they have two doghouses back there and they’re chained up back there.”
When asked by Gibson, “You don’t dispute that the dog bit the child, a minor, on the face?” White said, “Yes I do dispute that.” Whitney said it looked to him like his dog, a Staffordshire, would have scratched the person “because he had a knot on his head from falling on the concrete.” Whitney said his dogs were not mean and not vicious. “Chihuahuas are vicious. Police dogs are vicious. I don’t train my dogs to be vicious at all. My dogs have always been loving around kids, around people, around everybody.”
Whitney said the juvenile admitted to him that he attacked his dog to keep it from attacking his dogs. He said when police came over the next day regarding the attack, the fence was getting put up, “a new privacy fence.”
Osborne asked Whitney if the dogs have been out before and Whiteny told him if they were out there were on a leash or sitting on the porch chained with a leash. Osborne asked if the dogs were the only ones he had, and he said “yes sir.”
Whitney said since his neighbor moved in two years ago, “she has caused nothing but problems calling police all the time” about other dogs he said he has had. “Those weren’t my dogs getting out.”
Gibson asked Whitney if it was correct that there had been complaints about his residence, and he told him yes. “But it wasn’t my dogs,” Whitney said.
Councilman David Morris asked for specifics about how the dogs got outside into the yard.
“My cousin and I were getting ready to go outside to barbecue and the door didn’t latch all the way, the screen door, so the female dog, she pushed the door open and the male dog came out behind her,” Whitney said. He said the door is secure now and has been fixed but at the time they got out, it wasn’t catching all the way.
Councilman Rodger Cargile said there were multiple incidents, with seven dates mentioned, going back to Jan. 16, 2018, that involved animal control responding to complaints concerning his dogs. Whitney how many dogs he has and he told him two dogs. Whitney told Cargile that those were different dogs and not the two referenced in the August incident.
“I had one who could jump a 6-foot fence; it was a lab that I had,” he said. “I never owned pit bulls before. Like I say, the neighbor is the one who had caused all the problems and called for no reason because the dogs never did bother anyone.” He said if they got out, “he got them.”
Councilman Mike Chalenburg asked Whitney how long he has had his current dogs. Whitney said they are a year old now so he has had them eight months. Whitney said he just went to court last week and paid a $140 fine for the dogs being out.
Councilman Logan Cothern asked why the neighbor had called animal control in the past. He said it was because the dogs jumped the fences, “jump over the fence, climb the fence.” Cothern asked, “You didn’t remedy that problem at that time?” Whitney said he took care of it the best that he could. “But they kept getting out?,” Cothern asked. “This was different incidences,” Whitney said.
Searcy Police Officer Megan Frost said that when she responded to the scene of the attack, she was told by Wilhite that “her son bent down to separate the dogs and at that time was bitten on the left side of the face.” Osborne asked if it looked like a bite mark and Frost told him it did. Frost noted that the victim was bleeding on the left side of his face and had what appeared to be a bite mark above his left eye.
Wilhite said they were walking about a block from their house when two dogs ran out and they “immediately had that feeling that something wasn’t good.” She said she assumed there was going to be an attack and it “happened so fast.”
Wilhite said her son, Jadyn, a 17-year-old student at Harding Academy, fought the dogs off before the dogs were taken away by the owner, for which she said she was thankful.
Gibson asked Wilhite what types of dogs her family had and she said she has one dog that was on a chain, a 26-pound yorkiepoo, and the other was a dog that was dropped on their block two nights before the August incident. She said that dog was skinny because it was not taken care of and it was not on a leash but ran and hid behind a lady’s house during the incident.
She also brought pictures of Jadyn face that were taken at the hospital.
Morris asked Jadyn if he normally feels safe walking the dog. He said, “Yes sir, usually.”
Gibson asked Jadyn to tell the committee to the best of his recollection what happened. Jadyn said, “My mom, my girlfriend and our two dogs were on a walk and as we got to that part of the street, I noticed the two dogs running around the corner of the house.
“Typically when you see dogs coming up to greet other dogs, their tail might be wagging or they might be ready to meet and greet them but these dogs weren’t just coming out to meet them. They came out with their ears perked and they were ready to go, and all three of us, my mom, my girlfriend and I, noticed that and so I immediately put myself in between them two and our dogs.”
He said as he was pushing the yorkiepoo him, “I believe it was the female pit who jumped and latched on to my face, and so I put my hands on her collar and pushed her off of me and kicked her away from me. And the male tried to jump up so I punched the male on the snout, and at that moment, I believe Mr. Whitney came out of his house and the dogs were somewhere in the ditch area.
“I was just standing there with blood going down my face,” he said. If they were going to come back they were not going to get to my mom or my girlfriend. I knew that was of upmost importance.”
Jadyn said he had to go to a couple of ophthalmology visits to make sure his eye would close up correctly. “After the stitches were in it, it looked a lot better and all I know for sure is that I am just very blessed to have an eye [left eye].”
Gibson wanted to know if Jaydn told Whitney that he attacked the dogs. Jayden said that he did, then added, “I attacked the dogs after they attacked me. I didn’t initiate the violence by any means. I just knew that if I was going to let myself get bit by the dog, the best thing to do was to not let it keep biting me. so I got it off of me which yes, that did mean that I attacked the dog but by no means did I initiate the violence.”
Jadyn said the 6- to 7-pound stray dog they had with them put his tail between his legs and immediately took off in a different direction. “The yorkiepoo that was on the string literally just sat back because he knew he had no hope to fend off two pit bulls.
Referring to the calls Cargile mentioned that the city had received about Whitney’s dogs, Searcy Police Chief Steve Hernandez said they were not all made by the same person, but several people. Over the past three years, Hernandez said, it seems that Whitney has a hard time keeping the dogs contained and keeping them from attacking people and other animals. He said there was a case where one had somebody pinned down in the snow.
After the vote for the dogs to be removed from the city, Whitney immediately walked out of the chambers of City Hall.
Brent Wilhite, Jadyn’s father, said “The way the city ordinances read we understood that the dogs should have been taken to animal control from the get-go and they were not, so we were just concerned.”
“Most importantly to us, there’s a number of children in that neighborhood who get out and play. They’re in each other’s yards, they’re playing basketball and different things like that, that are very close to his residence,” he said. “We understand his predicament. He has to get rid of dogs he loves and we understand that, and that’s hard. Unfortunately, the situation happened and we feel better that many of the other kids in the neighborhood are protected now.”
Tisha Wilhite said, “Nobody did anything about the dogs all that time so we were just concerned why nothing [was] happening.”
What: Upholds decision regarding two pit bulls involved in August attack where one bit teenage on face
When: Thursday
Decision: Pit bulls ordered removed from city
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