Pit Bulls Maul Man’s Face and Attack His Pet Lab During Walk

VENTURA — His mauled face held together by more than 100 stitches, Richard Dietz said he would be satisfied with nothing less than the death penalty for two pit bulls that attacked him and his dog Saturday while they took an early morning walk.

At 7:45 a.m., Dietz, 30, and his year-old yellow Labrador Kya were walking near Anacapa Street and Ocean Avenue when they passed a pickup with a man and his two pit bulls sitting in the bed of the truck. One of the pit bulls attacked Kya from behind. As the pit bull’s owner tried to separate the dogs, the second pit bull attacked Dietz, biting him in the face, arm and legs.

“That dog got my lip and it was hanging down to my chin,” said Dietz, “and the fight was only half over.”

He escaped only after a witness, Jad Little, tossed his skateboard to Dietz. “I whacked that dog with the skateboard,” Dietz said.

The dogs now at bay, Dietz gathered up Kya and ran home to the 1900 block of Channel Drive. Dietz’s 20-year-old girlfriend, Sierra Kaval, took him to Community Memorial Hospital, where he was treated and released.

“I still have visions of this dog snapping my face,” Dietz said. “It was so quick, like someone took a hot knife and ran it through butter. But instead of butter, they slashed my face.”

Kya was taken to a veterinarian and required about 30 stitches to her stomach, neck and hind legs.

The pit bulls’ owner, whom the police had not identified, should have known they could attack, Dietz said.

“He had two of them and he couldn’t control either of them,” he said.

Despite the injuries, Dietz, a partner in his father’s pool construction business, said he would fight for his dog again. “I paid dearly for it, but I think anybody would have done that.”

Dietz said the incident has made him rethink his daily walk.

“That particular route I’m not going to do until I know those dogs have been taken care of,” he said. “The dogs should be destroyed.”

County animal control officers took the dogs from their owner Saturday. There was no word Saturday night on what would happen to the dogs.

No arrests were made. Ventura police officers said the incident was not considered criminal, and no further investigation is planned.