Palm Coast’s code enforcement division determined after an investigation that Chopper, the 2-year-old pit bull who attacked and severely injured a 9-year-old girl at 47 Powder Horn Drive in Palm Coast last week, is a dangerous dog and is to be put to death. The dog’s execution may take place Thursday. The city now owns the dog. Its former owner, Sarah Fancher, surrendered Chopper to the city three days after the unprovoked Nov. 4 attack.





The city’s investigation indicates a few inconsistencies with the initial incident report by the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, and 911 records confirm a claim by the victim’s father: that Fancher did not call 911 immediately after the attack. Only James Lanier Jr., the girl’s father, did so as he rode in the back of the family car, tending to his daughter Grace, while her mother drove to Florida Hospital Flagler. There, the girl received so many stitches on so many body parts that her parents lost count.

“They didn’t tell us right away,” Lanier told the 911 operator, referring to Fancher after the attack. In an interview, he claimed it was 15 minutes before he learned of the attack, as Grace was taken into Fancher’s home to be cleaned up. “I kept screaming for my mom and to go home,” Grace Lanier, the victim, wrote in her account of the attack. “My mom came and saw me. She said I needed stitches. I thought I was going to die.”

Lanier placed the call to 911 at 3:40 p.m. that Sunday. Fancher called the non-emergency line at the sheriff’s dispatch center 30 minutes later, records show. “I have a question for you,” she told the operator. “Our neighbor’s little daughter came over to our house to play with my daughter, and we have a pit bull that we got from animal society, anyway to make a long story short, the dog went through my son’s legs and bit this little girl, she’s at the emergency room right now, and I called animal control and they couldn’t come but we need to surrender the dog and they told me to call you guys and you would advise me what to do.”

In Fancher’s account to the sheriff’s deputy in the initial report, she said Grace had opened the screen door after Fancher’s son had opened the front door, thus enabling the dog to jump her–and in part shifting blame to the girl. The account left Grace’s father livid.

In her account in the animal control investigation, Grace states that after she knocked on the front door she could see the dog “going crazy at the window,” after he may have broken loose from his cage. (Fancher told deputies that the sound of the doorbell or knocking on the door caused the dog to act up.)

After Grace knocked on the door, she said Fancher’s son “opened both doors.” She asked him if his sister could come out and play. At that point Chopper, a 59-pound dog, attacked her. “His paw hit my head, knocking me down,” she related. “I kicked Chopper with my right leg. Chopper then bit my leg. Chopper then stood over me. I was screaming, Chopper get off, I put my hands and arms over my head, Chopper was biting me in the arm and shoulder.” The girl said that as the dog was attacking her, both of Fancher’s children hit Chopper in attempts to get him off of her. In the sheriff’s report, Fancher said she had been involved in trying to pry the dog away from the girl.

“She’s got bites all over,” her father told the 911 operator as Grace is heard screaming in the background. She’s been mending: she went back to school for the first time today. “She has a problem right now around other animals, when they bark she cringes, you can see it right away,” her father said, calling her his hero for making it through the ordeal. “All in all she’s doing awesome.”

“Chopper aggressively bit, attacked and endangered, and inflicted severe injury on a human (the Victim), while on private property,” the city’s code enforcement report “of findings sufficient to justify euthanasia” states. “The attack was unprovoked, as the Victim was conducting herself peacefully and lawfully and was been bitten or attacked by Chopper. Chopper caused physical injuries to the Victim which resulted in multiple bites and disfiguring lacerations requiring sutures or reconstructive surgery.”

Palm Coast’s animal control and code enforcement division routinely handle dog bites and dangerous dog issues. But the departments have been embroiled in an unusually controversial dangerous-dog case since last February, when a dangerous dog called Cooper bit a man in an unprovoked, second attack, leading animal control to issue a euthanasia.

In that case, the dog’s owner has been fighting the order–not because she disputes the dangerous dog designation, or even being separated from the dog (which has been quarantined at the Humane Society since February) but because she wants it sent to a refuge for dangerous dogs rather than killed. The city claims it has no choice but to put the dog to death. The dog’s owner sued in circuit court to stay the execution. That ruling is expected any day, though the judge signaled he was not likely to grant the reprieve.

Palm Coast is rewriting its animal control ordinance, which includes its regulations controlling dangerous dogs. The council is expected to see a draft later this month or early the next.