How pit bulls bounce trampolines into death traps for small children
Trampoline accidents rarely kill. Trampoline plus pit bull, though, is an often lethal combination. EAST HARTFORD, Connecticut––Lennox Torres Rohena, hours from his first birthday party at a local Chuck E. Cheese restaurant, gently bounc…
Trampoline accidents rarely kill. Trampoline plus pit bull, though, is an often lethal combination.
EAST HARTFORD, Connecticut––Lennox Torres Rohena, hours from his first birthday party at a local Chuck E. Cheese restaurant, gently bouncing on a trampoline with his pregnant mother Keyshla Torres, at about 3:00 p.m. on March 13, 2024 became the sixth U.S. toddler to be killed by a dog in less than a month.
Lennox Torres Rohena also became the sixth child since 2009 to be killed by a dog while trampolining, five of them killed by pit bulls or, in his case, a Dalmatian/pit bull mix.
The dog who killed one of the children was not identified.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Dog attacks involved in one trampoline-related death in six
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that trampolining results in an average of just over two fatalities per year.
This suggests that during the past 15 years dogs may have been involved in as many as one trampoline-related death in six, with pit bulls involved in five of those deaths.
At least 33 more children have suffered disfiguring injuries from dog attacks while trampolining, 28 of them attacked by pit bulls or pit mixes.
Dalmatian/pit bull mixes from the Lennox Torres Rohina home. (Facebook photo)
Lennox Torres Rohena
Lennox Torres Rohena was the youngest fatality from a dog attack while trampolining. Two twelve-year-olds and a 13-year-old who was mauled by a Rottweiler were the only victims of severe dog attack injuries while trampolining who were older than nine.
Five adults who tried to rescue child victims of dog attacks while trampolining were also injured, including Keyshla Torres.
Altogether, thirty-five of the 41 dogs involved in attacking children on trampolines were pit bulls or pit mixes: 85%.
Among the others, besides the Rottweiler, were a German shepherd, a Malinois, a coyote, and two dogs never identified.
(Beth Clifton collage)
"Believe it or not, it was the family dog"
Crystal Rod, sister of Keyshkla Torres and aunt of Lennox Torres Rohena, told Taylor Hartz and Kellie Love of the Hartford Courant that she was talking with her sister by telephone when the baby was attacked.
"Believe it or not, it was the family dog. Never in a million years would we have seen this coming," Rod said.
But pit bulls and pit mixes have now severely injured more than 3,000 children in the U.S. since 1982, killing more than 650 Americans altogether.
(Beth Clifton collage)
"Aggressive dog would not have been around the baby"
Said Ricky Rohena, father of Lennox Torres Rohena, "If the dog would have been aggressive or anything like that, trust and believe he wouldn't have been around the baby."
Yet if the long history of pit bull attacks demonstrates anything at all, it is that "aggressive" behavior is a poor predictor of the instantly reactive lethal behavior that has been bred into pit bulls for centuries.
The fighting pit bull who hesitates at the scratch line in a fight to the death to give warning signals is quickly a dead pit bull, who will not pass along the genes that characterize pit bulls and pit mixes today.
The whole point and purpose of pit bull breeding has always been to produce what outside of the fighting pit would be recognized by people of sound judgement as an inherently unstable dog.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Pit bulls kill small children for survival?
Longtime pit bull defender Thompson G. Page, introduced by Hartz and Love as "attorney and co-founder of the Center for Animal Litigation in Hartford," told them that dogs "communicate that they are scared about their situation by biting. This is happening in a split second and this is happening with a complete instinctual reaction to surviving."
What Page did not say is that most dogs exercise a certain amount of judgement and do give warning signals before they attack.
Most dogs recognize that members of their own household, especially small children, are not existential threats to their survival.
Most dogs do not race into neighbors' yards, leaping over fences and hedges, or even diving out of windows, to attack children at play, on trampolines or otherwise, but pit bulls have, and do.
Jazilyn Mesa. (Facebook photo)
Cheyenne Peppers & Jazilyn Mesa
Two of the three pit bulls who joined in killing five-year-old Cheyenne Peppers as she trampolined on January 6, 2009 at her mother and stepfather's home in Thomasville, Georgia reportedly broke free of chains to do so.
Fifteen-month-old Jazilyn Mesa's mother had a rule that the baby was never to be left alone with her grandmother Leticia I. Mesa's pit bull Tyson, who killed her on May 8, 2012 in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Leticia Mesa, 53, reportedly admitted to police, however, that she left Jazilyn alone with the pit bull anyway, while Jazilyn trampolined, because she thought the mother was "overprotective."
Leticia Mesa in December 2013 plea-bargained a suspended sentence for owning a dangerous dog.
Tanner Smith. (Memorial Funeral Home of Vidor photo)
Tanner Smith
Tanner Smith, who survived heart surgery as an infant, was killed by two pit bulls on October 21, 2015 while trampolining with two friends at a relative's home in Vidor, Texas.
The attack came only two days before Tanner Smith's sixth birthday.
The two pit bulls had previously escaped from the yard to attack a nine-year-old girl and on another occasion killed a neighbor's puppy.
Both incidents were reported to the Orange County sheriff's office.
The sheriff's office, however, had not deemed the pit bulls dangerous enough to impound.
Jacob Brooks. (GoFundMe photo)
Jacob Brooks
Four-year-old Jacob Brooks was left inside an enclosed trampoline on July 28, 2017 in El Paso, Texas.
He apparently got out somehow into a yard with four dogs including a pit bull who, according to a City of El Paso Animal Services Center report obtained by KFOX14 Investigates reporter Genevieve Curtis, "appeared to be underweight and had chronic scars all over her muzzle, front and back legs consistent with fighting."
Another of the dogs, a one-year-old German shepherd, "was extremely un-socialized and did not do well with any handling."
A third dog was "extremely emaciated with hip bone, spinal bones and shoulder blades prominent, and abdominal cavity completely sunken in," the City of El Paso Animal Services Center report said.
Parents Ashley and Brittany Brooks were both initially charged with felony charges of injury to a child by omission. Brittany Brooks eventually pleaded guilty to a charge of reckless injury to a child, receiving a sentence of two years of deferred adjudication probation, a $500 fine, and 100 hours of community service, to be dismissed if the probation is successfully completed.
The case against Ashley Brooks was dropped.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Why are pit bulls uniquely "triggered" by trampolining?
Among more than 110 alleged "Triggers that Prompt a Pit Bull to Attack," identified by pit bull owners and apologists after attacks and compiled into lists by various data-trackers, "jumping on a trampoline" is among the very few of evident recurring significance.
But what aspect of trampolining might be construed as a trigger to a normal dog?
That small children are bouncing around, possibly shrieking with laughter while having fun?
Beth, Merritt, & Teddy Clifton.
Why were pit bulls 35 of the 41 dogs who were allegedly "triggered" by trampolining?
Trampolining, per se, may have had little if anything to do with any of the trampoline-related fatal and disfiguring dog attacks, while the fact that the dogs were pit bulls may explain most or all of them.
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