About 30 people were squeezed into a small conference room at the West Los Angeles Animal Shelter on Pico on September 19, to attend the hearing for a boerboel mastiff, El Jefe, that lives on upper Chautauqua. The dog’s owner, Lindsey Scully, is accused of violating Los Angeles Municipal Code Section 53.34.4 by maintaining a dangerous animal. The five-hour hearing included six witnesses who spoke of attacks on people or a pet, an expert on animal behavior, five witnesses who spoke to the gentle nature of the dog and the owner’s ability to handle it, and a L.A. Department of Animal Services officer. Because of the length of the hearing, the case has been continued to a future date, so that the dog’s owner can be questioned. Hearing examiner Karen Knipscheer Cox began by reading the code section stating that a person who possesses a dog and allows it to be uncontrolled in a public area is guilty of a misdemeanor if dog bites or causes injury to any human being or animal. Cox then explained that the hearing could have one of four possible outcomes: the owner exonerated; the dog license reissued with conditions, such as a higher fence or training; the license revoked with the dog immediately removed from the city–the owner may not have a dog for three years; and the dog euthanized–the owner may not have a dog for five years. All witnesses were sworn in and then asked to leave the room so that prior testimonies would not influence subsequent ones. After each testimony, the hearing examiner asked questions, as did Scully’s lawyer Michael Rotsten. First to testify against the 14-month-old boerboel was Alex Gansa, who said he has walked his dog, Auggie, to upper Chautauqua every morning for the past 10 years. On May 4, shortly before 7:30 a.m., he saw the mastiff ‘charging’ his dog. He lifted Auggie up, with the idea of putting his dog on parked car’s roof, but ‘the dog leapt up and bit Auggie in his hindquarters. I grabbed the dog’s collar and it dropped my dog and turned towards me and started to attack me and I punched him in the nose.’ Gansa testified that Scully came running out of the house and grabbed the boerboel. ‘I think I saved my dog’s life,’ said Gansa, who testified that the incident was terrifying. On cross-examination, Scully’s lawyer Michael Rotsten wanted to know if Gansa took his dog to a veterinarian and why that information wasn’t in the record. Gansa said he had sent the vet information to the animal control officer. Rotsten, upon finding that Gansa’s wife had taken the animal to the vet, wanted the injury information discarded as heresay. Cox told the attorney to move on. Rotsten wanted to know why Gansa didn’t put charging in his original statement because he said the word was prejudicial. Cox told him to move on. Rotsten asked, ‘When you took hold of the collar, did it bite you?’ ‘No,’ Gansa said. Rotsten than started a line of questioning that he repeated with subsequent witnesses in an effort to show provocation. ‘Wasn’t there heavy construction going on the hill at the same time?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Gansa said. ‘Could you hear jackhammers?’ Rotsten asked. ‘I was having a calm pleasant morning,’ Gansa said. ‘Are you denying there were jackhammers?’ Rotsten asked. ‘I did not hear any jackhammers,’ Gansa replied. Next, witness Stewart Levine described how he walks every morning to the top of Chautuaqua and around the fenced-in reservoir. ‘As I came around the side of the reservoir [July17, 8:45 a.m.], I was attacked by a dog. There was no warning. The dog appeared from nowhere.’ Levine rolled down a slight incline in an effort to get the dog off him. The owner suddenly appeared and took control of her dog. Levine was treated by Fire Station 69 paramedics and then taken to the hospital. He was bitten on three or four places in the posterior, and also had a bite or a paw scrape on his neck. He was asked if the dog was on a leash, and Levine said no. Levine testified that the owner said, ‘I didn’t think anyone would be up here.’ Rotsten asked, ‘Prior to being bitten, did you personally scream at my client?’ ‘Absolutely not,’ Levine replied. Levine was asked if he was pursuing a lawsuit, but the hearing examiner declared that fact irrelevant for the hearing. Micheal Zatsick, who testified next, said he had been bitten in the posterior by the boerboel in question on September 10 near Las Pulgas. Scully’s attorney objected because the testimony was not part of the submitted exhibit, but the hearing examiner agreed to hear testimony. Zatsick identified the dog, but did not identify Scully as the person with the dog. Rotsten than asked the officer to strike his testimony, because Zatsick didn’t describe the dog before being shown a picture of it and Rotsten also noted that El Jefe was in Encino at the time of the attack. ‘I’ll consider it,’ Cox said. The fourth witness, Winston Salser, said that on the evening of March 23, he was speaking to Scully’s roommate, Jessica Goldman, who had El Jefe on a leash by her feet. He asked her the breed, but when he offered his hand for the dog to smell it, it bit him. ‘He dragged me about a dozen feet. I was bleeding all over the place,’ said Salser, who called a private physician, who advised him to go to an emergency room. Cox asked, ‘Did Jessica ask you not to pet the dog?’ Salser replied, ‘No.’ Cox asked, ‘Have you healed from your wound?’ Salser said, ‘Yes.’ Rotsten then queried Salser about an incident at the beginning of March when the two women moved into the house. According to Salser, he was trying to get home, but a moving truck was in the middle of the road. He said he was directed by a mover to go in the house and ask someone to move it. ‘You went in the house and started yelling,’ Rotsten said. Salser denied it. Cox wanted to know the relevance to the questioning, and the attorney pointed out that since Salser had shouted, the boerboel remembered, giving it a motive for provocation. The fifth witness, Lyle Omori, a trainer and masseuse, was walking with his client Danny Kallis on upper Chautauqua at 7:30 a.m. on May 4. ‘I felt this bite on my arm. I didn’t know what it was. I broke away. It was viciously attacking me. I felt like it would rip off my arm.’ He said that his friend started yelling for help and then a girl came out and started shouting at the dog. Omori suffered nerve damage in both arms and is scheduled for surgery. Rotsten asked him, ‘Was there construction?’ Omori told him it was 7:30 a.m. ‘Have you never seen construction at 7:30 a.m. in the morning?’ The hearing examiner stopped the line of questioning. Danny Kallas testified next, telling the same story as Omori, that the attack had come from nowhere, that it was unexpected and that there was no warning. He said he looked for a stick to try and hit the dog to get it off his friend, when a woman came out of her gate. ‘She screamed at the dog and hit him on the rump,’ Kallas said. ‘She saw that Lyle’s t-shirt was wrecked and said, ‘I’ll buy him a new shirt.” ‘I replied that it was a relentless violent attack and she said, ‘I am not a bad owner.” Kallis said that Omori was taken to the hospital and has since seen numerous doctors, but that he hasn’t been able to return to work. The two men had initially filed a police report, but only after talking to Gansa had they also filed a report with Animal Services. L.A. Animal Services Officer Gonzales testified next. He said that Scully didn’t have a dog license, so he sold her one at her premises on June 18. Additionally, after reports from residents, officers posted four notices for Scully to contact Animal Services–June 5, June 18 and twice on July 17 (11:20 a.m. and 8:30 p.m.). On July 24, an officer was at Scully’s home on upper Chautauqua and asked her to turn the animal over, but she refused. ‘My client did not break any laws; they needed a search warrant,’ her attorney stated, and then asked if Gonzalez had ever witnessed the actual posting of any of the notices. Gonzalez said he had not. ‘Would it be fair to say that you do not know if any of these notices were delivered properly?’ Rotsten said. ‘Did you witness anyone signing the notices?’ At the hearing, it was learned that the dog had been removed from Pacific Palisades to Encino to Marsha and Rodney Scully’s home (Scully’s parents). L.A. Department of Animal Services officer Troy Boswell confirmed that it was not necessary for Animal Service to take control of the dog, but rather ‘the notice issued by my predecessor was that the dog may not be at the Chautauqua address. If it returned it would be impounded.’ Scully’s lawyer then called rebuttal witnesses. Animal behaviorist Dr. Richard Polsky testified that the dog was not violent. Cox reminded him ‘the dog is not violent in your opinion.’ Rotsten asked, ‘Does this dog need to be destroyed?’ ‘Not in my opinion,’ Polsky said. ‘I think most of these incidents were provoked.’ Cox reminded him ‘in his opinion’ and asked him if he was being paid and by whom. Polsky identified Lindsey Scully as the person who hired him. The next witness was Scully’s roommate Jessica Goldman, who said that she had warned Salser not to touch the dog. Goldman also testified that Salser had come into their rented home three weeks early and screamed at them about a moving van. ‘Does the dog ever act aggressively towards any person?’ Rotsten asked. ‘You mean in our home?’ Goldman said. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘No,’ she replied. Scully’s parents and two friends were also called to testify on the dog’s behalf. All said the dog did not act aggressively and that they did not fear the animal. ‘He gets along so well with our chocolate Lab, that they eat out of the same bowl,’ Marsha Scully testified. Her husband Rodney testified that the dog had been with them for three to four weeks, but played calmly with two grandchildren, ages five and nine. He also said the dog is contained behind a six-foot chain-link fence.
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