Owner of Captured Pit Bull Fights Time to Keep It Alive

A pit bullterrier named Ugly marked time at the Orange County Animal Shelter in Orange Thursday while owner Kyela Beckman frantically scrambled to pay the hefty price placed on Ugly’s head. The deadline for action to save him is 5 p.m. today.

San Clemente Fire Chief Tom Dailey, speaking for the city’s animal shelter, wants Ugly dead, but Beckman has been given a chance to save her dog.

She must do the following:

- Put up a $100,000 bond or produce $100,000 in liability insurance.

- Prove that she has an enclosure strong enough to contain the animal.

- Arrange a permanent identification, such as a tattoo or ear tag, to be placed on the dog.

- Pay the $15 impounding fee, plus $5 for each day the dog has been impounded, plus a citation fee not yet set.

Beckman, contacted late Thursday night, said she has been desperately trying to obtain a court order to prevent Ugly’s demise. She has contacted an attorney, she said, who advised her to file a claim against San Clemente this morning and then petition Orange County Superior Court for the restraining order. She said she would be in court as early as possible today.

Asked if she thought she had been treated fairly by animal shelter officials, she said: “No. I was not treated fairly. I have been railroaded, run around and lied to by more people than I ever knew existed.”

She said she believes that she and Ugly have been victimized by the current hysteria against pit bulls.

But Dailey disagreed. “The dog is vicious,” he said Thursday.

Ugly’s troubles began when he and Skinny, an Australian shepherd mix also owned by Beckman, were seized Sunday after being found chained to the bed of an illegally parked pickup truck on Granada Drive, San Clemente Fire Marshal Gene Bagnell said.

Beckman will probably be cited for leaving an unattended animal in a public place, he said.

Animal Services Officer Marc Lemieux said he cited Beckman last month for not having a proper license for Ugly, who was under investigation following reports of dogs roaming a San Clemente neighborhood killing cats.

Monday morning, the 3-year-old pit bull was placed in an exercise pen while his kennel was being cleaned. The 70-pound dog scaled a six-foot-high fence, ran through another exercise area, scaled another six-foot-high fence and attacked an Old English sheep dog, Lemieux said.

Lemieux said that by the time he reached the scene, the sheep dog, which Dailey described as “docile, gentle, really friendly” and a favorite at the shelter, was lying in a pool of blood, apparently from a single wound to the upper leg that severed major arteries. He died within minutes.

But a friend of Beckman’s, Robert Stone, said there was another dog between Ugly’s pen and the sheep dog’s. He said he thinks that dog may have been Skinny and that Ugly was just protecting his friend.

The pit bull jumped back over the two fences to the original exercise pen, where Lemieux captured him with a pole and noose.

Ugly is now being held at the more secure Orange County Animal Shelter, said Dr. Nila Kelly, acting director of the Orange County Animal Control Division of the county Health Care Agency.

Although the rule for requiring a bond on dogs has been “kicked around” in San Clemente for the last 60 days or so, Ugly is the first dog in Orange County to have a price put on his head, Bagnell said.

The money the shelter wants is ridiculous, Stone said: “If it was my dog, I couldn’t come up with it. She’s being railroaded. They want him dead.”

Dailey agreed that he wants Ugly dead, money or no money.

“That dog is likely to attack again, and who’s going to pay, the city, because we had a vicious dog and turned it back?

“We don’t want to be liable, and we want to have adequate public protection.”

This way, he said, San Clemente gets to dictate the terms.

Bagnell said Beckman could still attain a court restraining order, staying the execution.

“We’re willing to take this before the judge,” he said.

The $100,000 bond is no big deal, Lemieux stated, just “a rider on your homeowner’s insurance to cover your dog.” The money or insurance would be used in the event of another attack by the dog.

But David Havard, a sergeant in investigations for the Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said the bond demand was the stiffest measure he had ever heard of.

“If I was the owner of that dog, I’d think that was pretty high,” he said.

Also, Kelly said Beckman is a transient with no permanent address and probably no liability insurance. But Beckman emphatically denied that she was a transient.

She said she had lived in San Clemente since 1968, “20 years in the same house,” and that other family members lived in Orange County.

She said that the house had been sold recently and that she was moving to New Mexico. She would have been there before the dog incident had not the gasket on her car blown, she said, and now she will stay until Ugly’s fate is decided.

“I want my dog back,” she said. “He’s never done anything . . . but he’s a pit bull. They (animal control officers) knew what he could do,” indicating that the San Clemente shelter had not properly contained him.

She said that Lemieux had admitted to her that the San Clemente shelter had been negligent in handling Ugly and that was why they had transferred him to the shelter in Orange.