Dog owner found not guilty of letting pit bulls run free

Sept. 8– In an incident which left a teenage girl hospitalized at Vanderbilt for a month, a Hardin County jury found a local man not guilty of allowing his pit bulls to run free.

Following a half-day criminal trial last Thursday, the eight woman, four man jury deliberated about an hour and 15 minutes before returning the verdict in favor of Jeffrey D. Shelby of 2510 Middle Bridge Road.

Alison Walker was 14 on March 9, 2010 when she and and a 14-year-old friend were riding horses on Middle Bridge Road in northeast Hardin County when the horses were spooked by dogs and Alison fell, sustaining critical head injuries, testimony showed.

Walker said she can remember things before and after, but nothing of the actual incident.

The defense case centered on the contention Shelby’s dogs were in a 6-foot-tall pen and the adult male pitbull climbed over the fence when provoked by dogs accompanying the horse riders.

"I had to learn how to walk again. I had to learn how to eat again and I felt so bad about it. I felt like a child," said Walker, now 16. "I remember going back (to the hospital) to get my skull put back in."

Grace Griffin, 16, who was riding with Walker the day she was injured, testified her two small dogs were accompanying them on the ride, along with a Chow dog owned by a neighbor.

"I always bring my dogs with us when we ride horses," she said.

Griffin said they saw some other dogs on Middle Bridge Road, but she decided their horses were accustomed to dogs and they continued on.

She testified that as they approached the bottom of the hill, a woman advised the the dogs would not bother them.

But something happened and the dogs attacked the horses. "Mine stopped bucking for a minute and I jumped off," she said.

Walker stayed in the saddle as her mount began running away but then fell to the ground.

Griffin said she went to Walker and found her with "a bunch of gravel in her eyes," and "I turned around and saw the pit bulls fighting the Chow."

She said the woman who told her the dogs "ain’t going to hurt you" helped her get Walker to the front porch of the house at 2510 Middle Bridge Road where they waited for emergency personnel to arrive.

But under cross examination by defense attorney Ryan Feeney of Selmer, discrepancies appeared in Griffin’s testimony. Notably, Griffin never mentioned a woman saying the dogs were not a threat during a preliminary hearing in the case.

Feeney also questioned Walker’s riding abilities.

"She wasn’t an awful rider. She was a good rider, but not very experienced," Griffin said.

Walker "was scared. She didn’t know what to do" and "didn’t have the presence of mind to get off the horse," Feeney told the jury.

Chris Osment, a Hardin County public school teacher and former pastor of New Harmony Church lives in the vicinity of where the incident occurred. He said he regularly saw Shelby’s dogs "out loose, chasing dogs up and down the road."

Jeana Shelby, the defendant’s wife, testified a pitbull puppy was loose in her yard on the day Walker was injured, but their adult male and female pits were penned. Describing the male as "real territorial" she said the male "jumped the fence and attacked her dog (the Chow)."

She said she tried unsuccessfully to separate the dogs, but then got a Tazer and shocked her pit and put him on a chain.

Although the prosecution presented photos showing apparent bite injuries on the horses, Jeana Shelby said she never saw her dogs bite the animals.

In response to testimony from Hardin County Deputy Sheriff Johnny Alexander that no one came to the door when he went to her house to investigate the incident, Jeana Shelby said she hid because there was a warrant out for her arrest for failure to appear.

Jeffrey Shelby, 39, said he was out of state on the day of the incident.

He said he keeps the dogs for protection because the house had been broken into several times.

In support of his wife’s claim that the dogs with Walker and Griffin came into his yard, he said his female pitbull was in heat.

However, Shelby admitted to regularly letting his dogs loose if he is home, especially after 11 p.m. until morning.

"My male can be vicious to another dog," he said. But if the dogs stray into the road, "I give them a good whipping."

(Ed. note: In the current print edition, Alison Walker is incorrectly identified as Alison Wilder.)