By JOHN BARTON

NEWS STAFF REPORTER

A 13-year-old boy cried on the witness stand Monday, recalling with tears in his eyes how he was badly mauled by a dog after delivering a Sunday newspaper to an Ann Arbor home in August.

Alex Newton spent five hours in a hospital emergency room while doctors stitched gaping wounds and battled to prevent infection from dog bites to his arm, leg, back and buttocks.

"The dog jumped at me from the back." The teen-ager testified under questiong by Assistant City Attorney Susan Cameron. "Ifell down and he started biting me. I tried to get up and was screaming."

But the dog, a chow named Otto, refused to break off the attack until the boy's father eventually managed to force open the animal's jaws and drag the dog away from his bleeding son.

The younger Newton relived the horrifying attack as the first witness called in the trial of Otto's owner on a misdemeanor criminal charge of possessing a vicious dog.

Seiko Ikuma, 61, is accused of violating the city ordinance. She chose to go to trial rather than accepting a plea agreement.

The boy's father is expected to testify when the trial resumes this afternoon before 15^th District Court Judge Ann Mattson and a jury of five men and two women.

Testimony is expected to conclude some time Friday.

Ikuma's chow has bitten at least two other people since 1995, according to Cameron, and has been confined at a Dexter kennel since the Aug. 23 attack. Otto could be ordered destroyed if Ikuma is convicted.

Ikuma's attorney, Thomas Moors, concedes Otto attacked the boy, but insists his client should not have been charged with a criminal violation of Ann Arbor's dog ordinance.

The jury will be asked to render a verdict in a case that combines blood-chilling testimony interlaced with gruesome photographs of the victim.

It will also be a long trial, and could involve testimony of more than 30 prosecution and defense witnesses, if lawyers on both sides call all of the prospective witnesses.

"Alex Newton was in that emergency room five hours," Cameron told the jury in her opening statement. "You will hear a doctor say he never saw a dog bit like this. There was flesh torn out of his buttock. There were deep lacerations."

Alex Newton testified he was delivering the Ann Arbor News to Ikuma's home as a substitute carrier, and had never been in the neighborhood before. He said he walked to the porch, saw the front door was open and noticed a dog sleeping in the hallway.

He said he opened the storm door, and dropped the Sunday paper on the floor inside the house. He was unable to fasten shut the storm door, and was walking away when he heard the dog bark.

"I was about five feet from the door," he testified. "I heard the dog bark and it started to jump against the door. He made the door open, and I started to run. He jumped on me from the back. I fell down and he started biting me."

Moor'scross-examination was brief, with the boy recounting details of his story and admitting the sound of a heavy Sunday edition dropping on the floor inside the house may have awakened the sleeping dog.

"What we have here," Moors told the jury in his opening statement, "is an unfortunate case of a 13-year-old without any training who opened the door of a 61-year-old woman who lives alone. He tossed a newspaper into the house, and startled the dog."

Moors said his witness list includes the regular paper carrier who has delivered papers to Ikuma's house for more than two years without problems with Otto.

The trial was to resume at 1:30 p.m. today in the downtown Ann Arbor courthouse.
 

I have some comments of my own. This is one of the most disgusting pieces of reporting I have ever seen. It is biased, inflammatory, innacurate, and egregious.

Note how the following phrases are used to manipulate the unwary reader into a sense of outrage:

Hmmm...

If Mr. Barton had bothered to read the hopital record, as one might reasonably expect of a conscientious and professional journalist, he COULD not, in all conscience, have written such nonsense. 

What does this suggest to you? Doesn't it suggest that the attack went on and on, and that the boy's father is a Superman and a hero? 

In fact, the attack was over in a few seconds, and while Mr. Newton is to be commended for reacting quickly, I would expect ANY father, and not just the Superman type, to grab a dog that was attacking his child. 

"horrifying attack"
...

In my honest opinion,

David Ellis, a friend of Otto's.

P.S. Perhaps Mr. Barton and his editor at the Ann Arbor News saw things differently after all the evidence was in and Mrs. Ikuma was ACQUITTED by the jury of harboring a vicious dog. 

To find out, hit your BACK button and select the link to the Ann Arbor News dated Dec. 15, 1998. 

(I've just started using Linux, and when I try to create a hyperlink in Netscape Composer, Netscape crashes, hence no direct link. I'll figure this out soon; meantime, Linux and StarOffice are excellent altgernatives to Microsoft Windows and Office.)