Parent of dog bite victim wants tougher animal control

A Darlington County woman whose daughter’s ear was partly bitten off by a dog called for tougher animal control ordinances Monday night during a Darlington County Council meeting.

Robin Conger told council the dog that attacked her 7-year-old daughter nearly a month ago still has not been deemed dangerous.

She said she thinks the dog, a yellow Lab that has since been returned to its owner, should be put down, but she said at the least she wants it declared dangerous.

According to reports, the child was playing on a trampoline at a friend’s house when she was bitten.

Conger said half her daughter’s ear was bitten off in the attack. She said her daughter was bitten at least three times and suffered deep lacerations.

Conger showed council photographs of her daughter’s injuries. She said she has received no satisfactory answers from the county officials with whom she has attempted to discuss the matter.

She told council she did receive a letter from County Attorney Jim Cox stating that the dog would not be deemed dangerous.

“Nobody has given me any explanation as to why the dog has not been deemed dangerous,” Conger said.

Council received her comments as information but took no action.

In another matter, Chief Fourth Circuit Public Defender Michael Stephens and Deputy Circuit Public Defender Robert L. Kilgo Jr. presented their agency’s budget request for the upcoming budget year to council.

The agency, which serves the four counties that make up the state’s Fourth Judicial Circuit — Darlington, Marlboro, Chesterfield and Dillon — will not ask for an increase in funding from Darlington County for 2009-19, Kilgo said. The agency is requesting its funding from the county remain at its current level of $185,000, he said. Darlington County will provide 23 percent of the agency’s total $806,251 budget if council grants the request.

Kilgo, however, said the agency does plan to ask for increases from the other three counties in the circuit.

The budget proposal presented to council indicates the agency will seek $110,918 from Chesterfield County, up from $43,500; $100,187 from Dillon County, up from $52,000; and $87,809 from Marlboro County, up from $53,000.

Kilgo said the state already has cut the agency’s state funding by about $200,000, and he said another cut of about 1 percent could come as early as today.

He said the public defender’s office already has implemented five-day furloughs for agency employees to cope with the decline in state funding.

If the counties do not fund the agency, he said, the result could be layoffs since a significant part of the budget is tied up in salaries. It also could mean a return to the old public defender system, which Kilgo said is something nobody wants.

At one time, each of the four counties had its own public defender corporation. Last year, the four systems merged to form the new circuit system, Kilgo said.

— WBTW News13’s Kelly Gillespie contributed to this report.