Neighbor Says She Witnessed Fatal Mauling

At least one other person may have witnessed the fatal mauling of a college lacrosse coach, and the victim’s partner says it wasn’t the first attack.

An elderly neighbor has come forward, saying that she saw the attack through a peephole in her door, San Francisco Police Lt. Henry Hunter said Wednesday.

The woman, whom police have not identified, said that she was too scared to go outside but that the “dogs were banging against her door so hard she put the chain up,” because she was afraid they would break it down, Hunter said.

Sharon Smith said her partner of seven years, Diane Whipple, a 33-year-old coach at St. Mary’s College, had been bitten once before by one of the English mastiff-Canary Island dogs in their apartment foyer. Smith said the dog lunged for Whipple’s wrist last month and bit down on her sports watch, which prevented serious injury.

“She was terrified of the dogs,” Smith said.

Smith, a vice president at the Charles Schwab investment firm, has hired lawyer and former Alameda County prosecutor Michael Cardoza to monitor the district attorney’s investigation and to ensure that the dog owners, Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, are prosecuted. No lawsuits have been filed.

“I want to see the two of them locked up,” Smith said. “This isn’t a car accident, where it happens, and you grieve and then move on.”

As Whipple was coming home to the couple’s sixth-floor apartment with groceries Jan. 26, Bane, a 120-pound dog, attacked her, throwing her to the floor and ripping at her throat with his teeth as Knoller tried to restrain him, authorities have said. Another dog, Hera, reportedly tugged at the victim’s clothes. Whipple died later that evening at the hospital.

The two animals are part of an alleged fighting-dog ring in which dogs were bred to protect illicit drug labs. The ring was run by two white supremacist inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison, and in a bizarre twist, Noel and Knoller recently adopted one of them, Paul “Cornfed” Schneider, 38.

San Francisco Dist. Atty. Terence Hallinan has said Noel and Knoller could face manslaughter charges in Whipple’s death.

But Cardoza hopes that prosecutors will go one step further. He says that under a mischievous-dog section in the law, second-degree murder charges can be filed.

“Hopefully, they will bring charges,” he said. “And hopefully, they will be second-degree murder charges against these people.”

He said he expects to file suit against the couple within the next few weeks.

Calls to Noel and Knoller by Associated Press were not returned Wednesday.

Hunter said police have been gathering mixed information about the dogs.

“We want to be fair. We’re not going out with any preconceived notions. We’re letting the chips fall where they may,” he said. “We have had people say the dogs were friendly and they petted them every day and other people who say, ‘These dogs scared the heck out of me.’ ”

Smith said that she’s never really met the neighbors who live down the hall of their Pacific Heights apartment building, but that she had a close encounter with one of the dogs last year when she reached down to pet the animal.

“Robert screamed out, ‘No!’ ” she recalled. “He told me the dog had been in a fight in the park and was spooked. It made me scared of the dogs.”