Benton County to pay $1.6M to mother, son for attack by pit bulls with a troubled past
A Prosser area mother and her teen son were left with lifelong injuries after they were mauled by a pack of pit bulls that neighbors had complained about to Benton County officials for years.
Public records obtained by the Tri-City Herald show neighbors called and reported issues with the pit bulls and other dogs charging people, attacking livestock and killing pets as far back as 2019.
Even after Christin Gregerson and her son Hunter, then 15, were brutalized in April 2022, the dogs from an Old Inland Empire Highway property continued to terrorize the rural area.
This month, the Benton County commissioners agreed to pay the Gregersons $1.6 million to settle their tort claim against the county.
They’d asked the county for $3.5 million total for damages but told the Tri-City Herald in a statement that they were grateful to settle the case before they were forced to file a lawsuit. They wanted to avoid reliving the trauma in a courtroom.
Seven pit bulls belonging to the property owner Donna Ziegler’s daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend attacked the Gregersons in their own yard, leaving them with injuries so severe Christin was in danger of losing her arm.
“We will be forever thankful to our heroic neighbor who interceded with a shovel and somehow managed to get the pit bulls to stop their attack,” the Gregersons said in their statement.
“The same day these dogs attempted to attack another nearby neighbor of ours and killed their small dog also. The pit bulls came from a nearby property and had been frequently running loose in our neighborhood for months prior to the attack, despite a number of complaints about them.”
Christin was left with permanent damage to her right arm, and both were left with significant residual scarring that may require future plastic surgery. She suffered 65 bite wounds and Hunter had more than 100.
Their medical bills to date total $100,000. And they could be looking at as much as $77,000 more.
The public records obtained by the Herald include court documents, sheriff’s reports, code enforcement contacts, written statements submitted by neighbors as part of the claim, as well as damage claims. They show a pattern of trouble at the property.
Two of the dogs that attacked the Gregersons had been declared dangerous just three days earlier, and Benton County code enforcement officials had been back out the day before the attack to follow up on a continuing problem with abandoned RVs, broken-down cars and other debris on Ziegler’s lot.
The week before, a neighbor’s friend was chased to his car by some of the dogs that also drove a cow into the road, where it was hit by a car and died.
The dogs’ owners Melanie Daniels and Darrell Wynn were charged in connection with the dog attack but both died before the case went to trial.
Animal control failings
The Gregersons now hope the county will take a harder look at its animal control and code enforcement policies to prevent another attack like theirs.
“The pit bull attack we endured has forever changed our lives, and while we will probably never fully put the incident behind us — as we will forever live with the physical and emotional scars from the attack — it is our hope that this resolution will provide us with at least some closure and allow us to move positively forward as a family,” the Gregersons wrote.
“It is also our hope that something good comes from all of this, i.e., that the County will better train its Code Enforcement Officers to help them better enforce the County’s Animal Control code provisions and that the Sheriff’s Office will take complaints about properties and people with too many dogs, aggressive dogs and dogs running at large more seriously in the future, so that hopefully something like this never happens to anyone else.”
A week before the county voted to settle the claim with the Gregersons, Benton County prosecutors filed charges in another dog attack in a neighborhood off Canal Drive in Kennewick that’s technically part of the county.
Sara Amilia Madrigal is the owner of two pit bulls involved in the fatal attack on Kennewick business owner Billi Cameron. Those dogs also were previously declared dangerous by the county.
According to the Gregersons’ attorneys, at least three dogs still live on Ziegler’s property and are getting loose, including two described by Ziegler as “too mean and aggressive” to ever be let out of their kennels.
A neighbor there told the Herald recently that they are still having issues with aggressive dogs escaping from Ziegler’s Lower Yakima Valley property.
History of issues
Records show that Benton County sheriff’s deputies were called about the Prosser dogs just days before the Gregersons were attacked on April 8, 2022.
The deputy who responded was unable to contact Wynn, the owner of the dogs, but referred the report to county prosecutors for a potential charge of dogs “running at large.”
Despite the seriousness of the Gregersons’ attack, not all of the dogs were removed from Ziegler’s property.
Officers seized three dogs with blood on them, leaving as many as four others that had reportedly joined in the attack.
The dogs are believed to have belonged to Wynn and Daniels, but it was Ziegler who received most of the tickets and dangerous dog declarations between 2019 and 2023.
Daniels died of a suspected drug overdose in July 2022, and Wynn died a year to the day later, of complications from medical issues, according to public records and the Benton County Coroner’s Office.
After Wynn’s death, two counts of dog attack resulting in serious injury or death were dismissed.
Hunter Gregerson was nearly attacked again in August 2022, and it wasn’t until November of that year that most of the dogs were removed when a search warrant was executed after another neighbor was nearly bitten.
That warrant was requested because someone appeared to be trying to hide dogs from deputies.
Records between 2019 and 2023 show there were about nine adult dogs, mostly pit bull and pit bull mixes, and as many as 50-plus dogs and cats on Ziegler’s property, where Daniels lived with Wynn.
As far back as 2019 a neighbor reported the Ziegler property as a potential puppy mill that was so out of control that they had reason to believe the adult dogs were eating the puppies, according to code enforcement records.
After nearly two years of phone calls, more than 50 dogs and cats were removed from the property, but there were still major issues with abandoned vehicles and other debris.
Most of those dogs appeared to have finally been removed from the property in late 2020.
Then in 2021, a call about aggressive dogs in Benton City, about 20 miles east of Prosser, led to sheriff’s deputies first contacting Wynn about his pit bulls.
He told officers he was going to “take care of it” and was moving soon to Ziegler’s property near Prosser.
Less than two weeks later, a 911 caller was complaining about a group of pit bulls at Ziegler’s getting out and chasing people and animals.
Ziegler and Wynn were both told they could not have more than four dogs, according to reports from code enforcement and deputies, but it took nearly two years of complaints before the alleged puppy mill dogs were removed and then the calls shifted to issues with the aggressive dogs.
The attacks were so frequent that neighbors began leaving their car doors open while getting out to check their mailboxes in case they needed to jump to safety. Some say they also make sure to have a gun with them when out on their own property.
This story was originally published December 29, 2023 at 10:28 AM.
