Manassas Journal Messenger | Order needed to kill pit bulls

The 23-year-old owner of two pit bulls that mauled a 7-year-old boy has not given officials permission to kill his dogs.

Jason Whittington had until Monday to release the animals to Prince William County officials for destruction. The dogs were quarantined for 10 days after the Sept. 26 attack, which left a county boy with several injuries that included deep bite marks. The quarantine period, which is standard procedure in any animal attack, is to monitor the possible presence of rabies.

Without a release from Whittington, animal control authorities must seek an order from a judge to kill the animals.

Whittington could not be reached Wednesday.

The woman that saved Bryan Ward from the two pit bulls — named Half Dead and Tension — said she will testify in court this month that both dogs should be killed.

“I’m going to do whatever it takes,” said Wendy Boutselis, 40.

Boutselis beat the dogs with Bryan’s scooter after she saw the 11-month-old animals run the boy down and bite into him that Friday afternoon.

The blond and black-striped dogs escaped through a hole they chewed in a wooden fence behind Whittington’s 7571 Quail Run Lane town house off Sudley Manor Drive.

Boutselis, who had just finished mowing her lawn, saw the dogs charge Bryan, who was oblivious to their presence. He had just pushed off one foot propelling his scooter forward when the lunging dogs tackled him.

“I want the dogs to go down. I don’t like the fact that he has another one there — a female with puppies,” said Jaye Ward, Bryan’s grandmother. “I want him to pay dearly.”

She said Bryan stumbled into her town house moments after the attack “bleeding all over.”

Ward said Whittington came to her home Oct. 1 to say he was sorry for what happened. She claims he would not accommodate her request to fix the fence because he does not own the town house.

“And somehow, I don’t know how, I’m going to start campaigning the Prince William Board of Supervisors that these pit bulls are not allowed in a town house development like this,” Ward said. She said she is seeing a counselor because of trauma suffered because of the attack.

She and Boutselis were contacted by county animal control authorities this week saying they would be receiving subpoenas for an Oct. 22 court date.

Both dogs will remain in county custody at the Dumfries Road shelter until a District Court judge decides the animals’ fate.

“He’s not being cooperative with us,” Brian Oliver, administrative support coordinator for the Prince William County Animal Shelter, said of Whittington.

Whittington was charged with not having a county dog license and keeping of a vicious animal. The latter charge enables the county to seek a death order for the dogs.

If a judge agrees with the county’s charges, the dogs will be put down by lethal injection.

“I want the dogs euthanized, I want the dogs put down,” Boutselis said. “They’re vicious. They have the attack mode in them already. You couldn’t walk by their fence without those dogs attacking the fence trying to get out.”

Staff writer Daniel Drew can be reached at (703) 878-8065.