MANSFIELD — It was her first day volunteering at What Goes ‘Round Thrift Shoppe when Hettie Rohwer received a call from her husband that their two dogs were attacked.
The incident took place March 1 at the Rohwer’s home on West Third Street.
“Last Wednesday, I came out of the house after hearing some thumping on the side of the house and I saw two pit bulls just mauling one of our dogs,” Dennis Rohwer described at Mansfield City Council’s meeting Tuesday. He tried to fend off the dogs using a motorcycle helmet.
“I tried to grab whatever I could, but it was like beating on a tank,” he said. “It didn’t faze the dogs at all.”
“When I got home, there was one pit bull standing right where I parked my car covered in blood and his owner was trying to catch him,” Hettie said.
A Mansfield patrolman drove Hettie and her half Chihuahua/half Maltese, whose heart was still beating, to the vet.
“She died as soon as we got there,” Hettie said.
“This is what they did to her,” she said while holding a photo of her mauled pet.
The Rohwers’ other dog, a cattle dog, was severely injured.
“I adopted him from the pound in 2012,” Hettie said. “His ears stand up like a German Shepherd and he’s got a brown ring around one eye. He’s got a sweet face and he’s real gentle.”
Just four houses down from the Rohwers, Roger Ott was getting home from work and had his little dog, a Dachshund, in his arms. The same two pit bulls attacked him and his dog.
“They grabbed her by the head, pulled her out of my arms, severed her spinal cord, bit her ear almost off, and her tongue off,” he said. They also bit Ott’s finger.
The dog had to be put to sleep at the vet’s office, Ott said.
“We’re just wondering what the laws are here in town so that this will never happen again,” Dennis said.
Currently, pit bulls are banned in city limits.
The issue of pit bulls running loose in the city has been discussed at previous Mansfield City Council meetings, and it’s an issue that Law Director John Spon takes seriously.
“Richland County is supposed to provide protection for the city,” Spon said. “What we were shocked about is these pit bulls that got loose and killed these other dogs, the county dog warden didn’t take those dangerous dogs to the dog pound. He put them right back in the same home that they escaped from.
“When we found out, the police department and my office obtained a search warrant, and we went and got those dogs and directed the county dog warden to take those dogs to the pound.
“We didn’t know if there were children in there. We didn’t know if the dogs would get free again. They should be locked up in a dog pound.”
Hettie said she sees pit bulls on the loose at least once a week in her neighborhood.
“We have a pit bull epidemic,” she said.
Hettie said she’d be willing to focus her volunteer efforts on this issue, perhaps by helping ensure that any pit bull adopted from the pound is taken to the vet to be spayed/neutered.
“I have so many friends that would also do this and if they’d even ask, I bet there’d be a whole lot of people that would volunteer,” she said.
When she moved to Mansfield in 2001, she said that someone knocked on her door asking how many dogs she owned and for proof of licensing. That’s never happened since, she said.
“You guys don’t have the manpower to do it,” she said.
“No we don’t,” responded Council President Phil Scott.
“Well, I’m volunteering,” she said.
