“Because she did that, we’re able to sign this bill today,” DeWine told reporters.
The attack on Russell came during a playdate in June 2024. In October of this year, she told lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee that she was just trying to use the restroom when two she was attacked by two pit bulls. “I never imagined something so ordinary would turn into something so tragic,” she said.
“I truly thought I was going to die,” she recalled. “I remember the fear—how it felt like the world had stopped. I was in excruciating pain, unable to move, and I just kept thinking, ‘I want my mom.’ I felt completely hopeless until I heard a voice — a police officer — saying he was there to help me. I couldn’t see clearly, my vision was blurry, but I felt him lift me up and say, ‘You’re going to be okay.’”
Russell endured severe damage to her face during the attack. She told lawmakers that she needed a nine hour emergency surgery, a week-long induced coma, and three weeks in Nationwide Children’s Hospital in order to stabilize. She lost her ears and needed to relearn how to move, speak, and, as she says, “how to feel safe in my own skin.”
Once the bill goes into effect in mid-to-late March, Ohio prosecutors will be armed with greater criminal penalties for dog owners who are found to be negligent and unable to stop their dog from committing vicious or dangerous acts.
Some say the law could have saved the life of Klonda Richey, a Dayton woman killed in a vicious dog attach at her home on Bruce Avenue in 2014.
Richey, then 57, was found dead outside her 31 E. Bruce Ave. house in sub-freezing temperatures. When police responded to the scene, nearby dogs charged them and were shot and killed.
Richey’s relatives claimed that her death was preventable had the county’s Animal Resource Center, led by Mark Kumpf, been responsive to 13 complaints Richey made to that agency about neighbors’ dogs that eventually killed her on Feb. 7, 2014, leaving her torn and naked body in the snow to be found by a passerby.
Richey’s family sued Montgomery County.
If the county had designated the dogs as “dangerous,” protections could have included a higher fee for her neighbors, Andrew Nason and Julie Custer, to register the dogs and require them to provide evidence of additional insurance, the lawsuit argued.
In March 2020, her estate won a $3.5 million settlement.
With new law, owners negligent in dangerous acts, generally defined as an attack that caused injury but not a serious injury to a person, face a penalty of a fourth degree misdemeanor on the first offense and a third degree on a subsequent offense.
A third degree misdemeanor is the penalty for owners negligent in vicious acts, generally defined as an unprovoked attack that killed or seriously injured someone. The penalty can rise to a third degree felony if the dog had already been designated as a danger or vicious dog.
A press release from the Ohio House communications team said H.B. 247 will also:
- Give the local dog warden the authority to seize a dog immediately following such an attack;
- Revise the investigation and enforcement requirements for when an authority receives any complaint that indicates a possible violation of any provision of the Dog Law;
- Include protections for dogs that are defending themselves, their owners, or their property;
- After receiving due process, mandate termination of the dog if it kills or seriously injures a person.
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Avery Kreemer can be reached at 614-981-1422, on X, via email, or you can drop him a comment/tip with the survey below.
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