Area H.S. football: Week 8
Springfield vs. Fairmont
Tecumseh vs. Tippecanoe
Dog's owner visiting ailing wife as dog bites child
See photos from the scene
Thursday, May 15, 2008
SPRINGFIELD — On the morning that 82-year-old Richard Leeth made funeral arrangements for his dying wife, he received a call from the police telling him that his dog, Pepper, had attacked a child.
He and his grandniece, Tammy Esthers, were about to leave Heartland Nursing Home, where his wife, Betty, had been for the last 14 weeks, the last week of which she had spent in a semi-coma, when the call came.
Extras
"I was already numb from what was happening," said Leeth, referring to the incident on Tuesday, May 13. After he got off the phone, he told Esthers only that Pepper had escaped from his pen.
Esthers speculated that he kept the information to himself so as not to alarm her.
Betty Leeth, 81, had been an animal advocate, taking in strays and donating money to the Humane Society. The director of the local Humane Society branch was her friend of 14 years.
Now that she was in a coma, dying from terminal cancer, Esthers had taken over her responsibilities, including taking care of Leeth, who suffers from Parkinson's disease. For the past four months, Esthers drove him wherever he needed to go.
That Tuesday morning, she drove him to his Kenton Street home. The police and officers from the humane society were already there. They had driven the dog back into its pen and were now subduing it.
Leeth said nothing, Esthers recalled. He was distraught. He knew the family of the boy. He knew the boy, too, though he didn't know his name.
"The little boy would run by the fence and pet him through the cage," Esthers said of Pierson Ward, the boy who was then being rushed by ambulance to a hospital.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0367 or ecavallaro@coxohio.com.
