NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – A girl is recovering after being attacked at a local dog park. While the case can be taken to civil court, no criminal charges are being filed.

According to an incident report from the North Charleston Police Department, Saturday a girl was bitten in the face by a dog running loose at the Wescott Dog Park.

This dog park has specific rules and recommendations for those using the dog park and one of them states that not only are children under sixteen not allowed in alone, but it’s recommended that small children do not enter the dog park at all.

While in many cases you do see criminal charges filed in dog bite cases, this isn’t one of them for several reasons. Most importantly, there was no violation of any law.

“Generally when you see a dog bite, authorities are going to look for two different laws in my opinion. One is the leash law, whether the dog’s running at large. In this particular scenario, they were in a dog park where the dogs are allowed to be off of leashes or other restraints. The other one they’d look at is whether or not the dog is a dangerous animal. What that means is whether or not the owner had some sort of knowledge or should have known that the dog had a propensity or a tendency to attack humans or other domestic animals,” said Attorney Thomas Nelson, of Futeral and Nelson, LLC.