ELDORADO—The owners of two pit bull dogs, one of which was the subject of scrutiny in July after the death of a family pet, have removed the dogs from their residence and to a more secure location after a second Ordinance Violation was issued to them in August.
And while this might seem like a victory in the case of the death of the Shih Tzu, Charles, belonging to Shawnna Mitchell of Eldorado, the owners of the pit, Memphis, involved in the death of the little dog—Jonathan Roe and Ginger Tyring—are explaining that things didn’t quite happen the way Mitchell’s son explained that they did.
Subject of scrutiny
Roe’s pet pit bull, Memphis, was the subject of intense public scrutiny after a July 18 attack that left Charles dead and Mitchell’s 13-year-old allegedly injured.
Public outcry was so great that Saline County State’s Attorney Mike Henshaw opted to hold a press conference about it at the end of July and featured Dr. Cliff Morris as the presiding authority, as a veterinarian is the case manager under such an incident.
Mitchell was the recipient of some harassment from city officials, namely mayor Rocky James and his sidekicks, city ‘ordinance supervisor’ and police chief Shannon Deuel.
Shortly after Mitchell kicked the group off her property (where they appeared just prior to the press conference), her above-ground pool was slashed in two places.
Mitchell complained about the harassment and the treatment she felt she was receiving from authorities, who, she claimed, weren’t doing enough about the killing of her family’s pet pooch.
However, further investigation into the case reveals a situation that might be what’s keeping the authorities from taking her complaints any more seriously than what they already have.
As well, it shows that Roe may never have been in the wrong at all in the situation…which, when all is said and done, may not bode well for Mitchell’s small claims suit she has against the man.
Received second OV
Roe is the one who received the Eldorado Ordinance Violation ticket, this happening on Aug. 19.
At that point in time, he and his girlfriend Tyring decided that both Memphis and a smaller, younger female dog, Chanel, would be better off at a location away from the neat ranch-style home they’d purchased in Eldorado, and they relocated the dog.
The latest OV came after there was a complaint that Memphis was “running loose” in their yard without a tie-out, as was the restriction that had been placed upon Roe when the dog was deemed “dangerous” by Morris after the death of the Shih Tzu.
Reports indicated that it was Mitchell’s youngest, McKenzie, who was upset by the dog being loose and that the girl being upset was what prompted the call.
Official version
Roe and Tyring, however, have questioned the entire incident that lead to the “dangerous” designation of Memphis, who, up to this point, had never had a complaint against him.
The ‘official’ report (the one that was made to authorities by the Mitchell family, and which received wide news coverage) is that Jonathan Mitchell, 13, had taken Charles for a walk and as they approached the fenced enclosure of Roe’s backyard, Memphis broke free somehow, grabbed the little dog, and began shaking it, killing it almost instantly.
The young Mitchell boy reported he grabbed a downspout and beat the pit with it to get it to let go of the Shih Tzu. A woman who was passing by the scene also got involved in an attempt to get the big dog off the small one.
Both the woman and young Mitchell claimed they were injured in the melée, with the woman sustaining a scratch on a pinky finger, and Jonathan Mitchell claiming to have been bitten but with no breaks in the skin.
Mitchell described Roe as viewing these actions but “calmly walking toward his house” after it was over.
Roe was asked by investigating authorities if the dog had had rabies shots, and it was reported by authorities that Roe had said he had not.
Memphis was impounded at Morris’ office for observation and the whole thing lit up area news reports.
Dog pesters dog
However, Roe and Tyring explained—and showed physical proof—that the incident didn’t happen, and couldn’t have happened, the way it was described.
Their residence sits on a corner of Benton and State streets in Eldorado; their neighbors to the northwest are Daniel Kinsey and his family; to the northwest of the Kinseys are the Mitchells.
Therefore, it turns out that when Memphis got hold of Charles, what authorities are saying happened that reduced culpability on the part of Roe is true: Mitchell wasn’t even in his own yard with the Shih Tzu when it was “attacked.”
However, it was a little more removed than even that.
Tyring explained that the Shih Tzu was allowed to run out of the Mitchell’s yard, across the Kinsey’s yard, and up to the fenced enclosure where Memphis was allowed outside, and urinate on the fence, thus pestering Memphis in just about the worst way a dog could.
“That drove Memphis crazy,” Tyring said. “And Shawnna thought it was ‘cute,’ and would just laugh and laugh when Charles did that.”
Dog poked
But that wasn’t the only way that Memphis was pestered.
Roe said that he’d caught neighborhood kids—including Mitchell’s son Jonathan—poking long sticks through the wire mesh fence of Memphis’ enclosure, causing Memphis to grab them in his jaws and shake the sticks viciously—as dogs will do—but that the ongoing “poking” put the dog, as it would any creature, in a bad mood.
Roe said that he wasn’t even aware that this was going on until he kept going out back to the enclosure to mow, and would find sticks inside the enclosure, and would have to move them out of the way just to mow.
“At first I thought it was just the tree there dropping branches into the yard,” Roe, who bought the house last fall, said. “But it was just over and over and over, so I started watching, and sure enough, there were kids coming over and pestering Memphis by poking him with sticks.
The dog was growing nervous and didn’t seem to be doing well after months of this kind of treatment. Roe said he’d told the kids to stop taunting the dog, and tried to keep a closer eye on him after that.
Purported attack
Roe and Tyring explained one of the facets of Mitchell’s initial story that involved Memphis “trying to attack” their joint neighbor, Daniel Kinsey.
Memphis, they explained, had been in a dog fight the day before when a pit from down the street had broken loose and had gotten into Roe’s yard. The fight was not severe and was broken up, but Memphis was still rattled. Tyring was at the fence talking with Kinsey, and as Kinsey spoke to her, he continued to lean further and further over the fence.
Tyring said she warned Kinsey not to do what he was doing, as Memphis was taking everything as a threat since the dog fight from the day before, but Kinsey didn’t heed her advice.
“Memphis was rearing back,” Tyring said, “and I told Daniel to back up a little bit, and that’s when Memphis jumped at him at the fence.”
There was no contact made between the dog and Kinsey…but much was made over the incident when the situation with the Shih Tzu occurred.
Little dog did his bidness
On that day, July 18, 2013, Jonathan Mitchell had taken the dog out to do its business, and it naturally crossed Kinsey’s yard and went right up to the fence at Roe’s in order to piddle there and subsequently torment Memphis.
The Shih Tzu was not on a leash, which, according to Eldorado ordinances, is a violation, “Dog Running at Large.”
This time, however, Charles went pee at a point in the fence where Memphis had been biting and digging after being poked with sticks repeatedly, and the structure of the fence was weak. Memphis was able to grab at Charles through this weak point, and pull him into the enclosure, which is in direct opposition to the story Jonathan Mitchell relayed about Memphis being outside the enclosure and running at large, and attacking the smaller dog on Kinsey’s property.
Memphis then ran, with the Shih Tzu in his mouth, around the southwest side of the enclosure, made it out of the enclosure, and travelled to the front of Roe’s and Tyring’s house.
Ran to the front of the house
Both Roe and Tyring were able to see Memphis’ run with the little dog, since their attention was attracted to the back yard when the Mitchell boy began screaming.
The official report has it that Jonathan Mitchell picked up “a piece of wood” and began chasing Memphis around the side of the house. It was actually a gutter downspout in a brownish color, off of Kinsey’s house, the only thing that was within reach of the Mitchell boy.
Roe and Tyring, seeing that Memphis had gone around the side of the house, knew he was headed to the front yard, and they both went out the front door quickly, neither one dressed for the situation: Tyring had on a long t-shirt and underwear; Roe was in shorts.
At the front of their house, Tyring reached over the railing into the shrubbery and landscaping where Memphis had gone and grabbed his jaws from behind in order to force them open.
“He had hold of the little dog, but it wasn’t dead,” Tyring said. “I knew if I could just get him to let go, we could get that dog to the vet and it probably would have healed up and been fine.”
Tug-of-war
However, on the other side of the shrubbery was Jonathan Mitchell, who had ahold of the Shih Tzu.
Tyring and Roe described a kind of tug-of-war going on at that point, with Memphis on one side and young Mitchell on the other.
“I was yelling at him to let the little dog go,” Tyring said, “because he was pulling and it was hurting the little dog worse. And the more he pulled, the harder it was for me to get Memphis’ jaws open to let the dog go.”
Tyring and Roe said that even above the commotion, which by now included the woman who’d seen what was going on and had come to help, they could hear the little dog ‘rip’ as Mitchell pulled.
“Jonathan didn’t know what he was doing,” Tyring said. “He just thought he was going to be able to get Charles away from Memphis.”
But by the time Tyring was able to get Memphis’ jaws open, the little dog was gone. The Mitchell boy then took the dog’s carcass back to his house.
Could not have bitten anyone
Both Tyring and Roe, as soon as they got Memphis to let go, pulled the dog around the railing through the landscaping, across the landing, and into the house through the front door.
At no point, both of them said, could Memphis have bitten or scratched anyone.
“He never opened his mouth until I forced it open,” Tyring said. “And as soon as he let go, we both got our arms around him and forced him into the house.”
The scuffling that ensued in the landscaping could still be seen when Disclosure staff was at the location on Saturday, Aug. 17, a full month after the incident. The point in the cedar chips where Memphis had dug in and the tug-of-war occurred could still be seen in a kind of divot. Branches of the shrubbery were also disrupted, likely having broken off.
Kinsey’s downspout was also still on the lawn, up in the landscaping. Tyring said she’d seen it there for the past several weeks but didn’t have the slightest idea why it was there or whose it was, and didn’t move it in hopes that whoever it belonged to would come and retrieve it.
Tyring had scratched places on her arm where she’d born the brunt of the shrubbery where Memphis had gone to hide after grabbing up the Shih Tzu.
She said she suspects the scratches that Jonathan Mitchell had on his arm were from the same shrubbery. But she and Roe were certain of one thing: Memphis had not bitten Jonathan Mitchell.
Other inaccurate claims
Shawnna Mitchell’s claim of Roe “walking quietly into the house” after the incident also is questionable, as this was something that she could not have seen, since first, she was inside her own house, and second, there was no direct line-of-sight from the Mitchell house to the front of Roe’s house.
Mitchell was not aware of the dog’s death until her son came to her with the body, crying.
Both Roe and Tyring said that it was mere moments later that chief Deuel arrived.
Roe and Tyring were attempting to go over and reassure and comfort the Mitchells, with whom they’d never had any negative interaction and whose daughter McKenzie had been playing with Tyring’s daughter Destiny, roughly the same age, for the better part of a year.
The older Mitchell boy, Dylan, was punching the house and a truck, shouting at Deuel “Are you not gonna put that dog down right now?!”
Deuel therefore stopped Roe and Tyring from coming on the Mitchell property, in order to avoid any potential confrontation.
Roe and Tyring were both terribly upset about the situation, but even more upset when it was mischaracterized in print and other media through the official reports. To be fair, most media (including Disclosure) had been unable to reach the two until the August 17 date, but the venom that was directed at them due to Mitchell’s response was confusing to them, given that there had been few interactions between the neighbors, and that all the interactions had, up to that point (with the exceptions of the sticks in the dog enclosure) been positive ones.
Problems with the truth
Official sources have come forward since the incident to confirm that Mitchell’s juvenile son has been in trouble with authorities on at least one incident involving a BB gun and shooting out of a window in a neighbor’s house.
Other reports indicate that he had had a potential issue with Kinsey and had taken fireworks from the neighbor’s house, hiding them in a tree and setting them off later.
To his credit, the reports indicate that the 13-year-old fessed up to this behavior, and the situations were made right without the law or courts having to get involved.
But the bottom line, Disclosure was told, was that the boy has a problem with the truth, and this might have been what lead to the dog attack in the first place: allowing the little dog to come onto the territory of the pit, urinating on the fence; the sticks being used to poke at the dog; and ultimately, being less than honest about where the altercation with Memphis took place, who was present, and what exactly took place.
The small claims case
Were the witnesses to be pressed, as might end up taking place in the small claims suit Mitchell has filed against Roe, the truth would likely emerge and revers the claims Mitchell has made: She is seeking $10,000 for the situation which she characterized as “Roe’s pit bull dog viciously attacked my 13-year-old son Jonathan Mitchell, another female, and killed our family Shit Tzu puppy. I am suing for loss wages, court cost, medical bills and damages. I will show proof that this is not the first time this dog has attacked.”
What Mitchell will show as proof remains unknown, unless it’s the situation where Kinsey was lunged at.
The pit, incidentally, did indeed have its vaccinations; Roe merely couldn’t find the records when he went to look after the request was made by Morris.
Tyring and Roe point out that now that Roe’s family pets are removed from the premises, Mitchell has, in effect, ‘won.’
“They’re not around now,” Tyring said. “That seemed to be what she wanted.”
The small claims case has been set for a bench trial to be held Sept. 23.