Dog owner charged with murder in woman’s mauling
Pamela Devitt was taking a morning walk through her neighborhood earlier this month when a pack of pit bulls mauled her.
The retired office manager suffered 150 to 200 puncture wounds in the fatal attack. When the first sheriff’s deputy arrived on the scene in the Antelope Valley town of Littlerock, he saw Devitt on the ground with one of the dogs still mauling her.
On Thursday, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office charged the dogs’ owner with murder. Prosecutors could not recall ever filing a similar murder case, but said the incident warranted such serious charges because the owner’s dogs had attacked others before mauling Devitt.
DISCUSSION: Should dog owner face murder charge?
District attorney spokeswoman Jane Robison said authorities had received at least three reports of attacks by dogs belonging to Alex Donald Jackson, 29, since January.
“We believe there was evidence that he was aware the dogs were vicious and they have attacked before and he knew of the danger they posed,” Robison said.
Jackson, who authorities say was growing marijuana in his home, was arrested Thursday and is being held on $1,050,000 bail. He is expected to be arraigned Friday.
Devitt, 63, died en route to a hospital, and the attack sparked outrage in the neighborhood and beyond. Sheriff’s officials said detectives found Devitt’s blood on the muzzle and coats of four of Jackson’s eight dogs.
“There’s no way I can get the brutality of this out of my head,” Devitt’s husband, Ben Devitt, told The Times. “The fact that there’s animals out there roaming around with that kind of killer instinct, it’s just kind of something I can’t shake.”
Animal control officials took custody of Jackson’s dogs.
Murder cases involving dog attacks remain extremely rare, despite an increasing willingness by prosecutors throughout the country to file other types of charges, such as manslaughter and child endangerment, said Donald Cleary, a spokesman for the National Canine Research Council. The organization, which tracks dog attack cases, documented 34 dog-related fatalities last year. Six resulted in prosecutions; none involved murder charges.
Cleary said fatal dog attacks tend to occur in outlying locations much like Littlerock, a desert community of about 1,400 where chain-link fences surround scattered homes and signs caution trespassers and warn that dogs are present.
“It happens on the fringes of society — where people live to avoid others,” he said.
Littlerock residents complained Thursday about stray dogs roaming the neighborhood. Kimberly Eslick, 29, said her cat was killed by a stray dog in the area.
“It doesn’t surprise me at all,” she said of Devitt’s death, adding that she does not allow her kindergarten-age daughter out front alone anymore.
Another resident, Jane Hammer, 60, said she carries a pistol with a hot-pink handle whenever she leaves the house as protection against bands of wild dogs she has seen in the area.
The state’s highest-profile dog-mauling murder case was tried in Los Angeles about a decade ago when a San Francisco judge moved a Bay Area case south in reaction to local outrage at the victim’s death. In that case, a pair of Presa Canarios fatally mauled a woman in the hallway of her Pacific Heights apartment complex, leaving her with 77 bite marks.
A Los Angeles jury convicted the dog’s owner, Marjorie Knoller, of second-degree murder and her husband of involuntary manslaughter. A judge reduced Knoller’s conviction to involuntary manslaughter, but the jury’s verdict was reinstated following an appeal.
To prove murder in a dog-mauling case, prosecutors must show that a dog owner knew the animal could endanger someone’s life and acted in a way that showed a conscious disregard for that danger. The key is to show jurors that the animal’s owner was previously warned that the animal was capable of killing, said Jim Hammer, who successfully prosecuted Knoller.
“What this case will turn on is the prior incidents,” said Hammer, who is now in private practice and is not related to Jane Hammer. “These are preventable deaths. I applaud any prosecutor who pursues such a case.”
Devitt’s husband said his wife used a walking stick for balance when she went for walks. Stray dogs roam the area, he said, but had not bothered them before.
The couple had lived in the area for seven years, Ben Devitt said. Their home, he said, was about three blocks from Jackson’s, but the couple never had any interaction with him or his dogs.
On the morning of May 9, Ben Devitt was driving home from a graveyard shift as a lead mechanic at a Fontana truck stop when his wife was attacked about 9:30 a.m. near Jackson’s home on 116th Street East near Avenue S.
The first deputy to arrive chased the dog but it turned on him, prompting him to fire a shot toward the dog, which then ran away, a sheriff’s spokesman said. The deputy continued his pursuit and the dog turned in an aggressive manner. The deputy fired another shot, sheriff’s Capt. Mike Parker said, and the dog eventually fled into the desert.
When Ben arrived home, he found sheriff’s deputies going door-to-door, trying to identify the victim. They showed him his wife’s iPod, and told him that she had been mauled by dogs but was otherwise all right. Devitt drove to the hospital, expecting to find his wife alive.
Coroner’s officials determined that Pamela died from blood loss attributed to sharp force trauma inflicted in the attack. The couple have two children, including a son, who is a soldier, and a daughter, who is a marine biologist in San Francisco.
Sheriff’s homicide investigators recovered eight dogs, including six pit bulls and two mixed breeds, from Jackson’s home. Four of the pit bulls were believed to be involved in the attack. Authorities said they also discovered a marijuana-growing operation at the home.
In addition to murder, prosecutors charged Jackson with owner negligence of an animal causing death, cultivating marijuana, possession of marijuana for sale, possession for sale of a controlled substance, and assault with a deadly weapon stemming from a Jan. 13 incident in which he is accused of throwing a rock at a horse rider after his dogs attacked the rider’s horse.
Ben Devitt said he had mixed feelings about the charges, saying they don’t change the fact that his wife is dead. In the weeks since the attack, he said, he has read a lot of media coverage on pit bulls and learned that they don’t seem to be naturally vicious animals. Though he doesn’t own a dog, he said, people who train their animals to be violent need to have “a light turned on them” and he hopes that the criminal charges send a message to people with aggressive dogs.
He said his wife of 43 years took care of him, handling the couple’s yard, their finances and the cooking.
“I’m trying to catch up on all the things she did here,” he said. “It’s good in one sense that I’m very, very busy.... It helps keep my mind off it.”
Times staff writer Jack Leonard contributed to this report.
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