Tuesday, April 16, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
The future of three Rottweilers may be in jeopardy after they attacked a 12-year-old boy who climbed into their yard to retrieve a ball.
The boy's aunt, Michelle Reeves, did not say Monday night whether she will pursue legal action to have the animals destroyed, reserving her decision until doctors can provide a prognosis on her nephew Marcus Rodgers' mangled left arm and right leg.
He was listed in stable condition today at University Medical Center, a nursing supervisor said.
"From the looks of the flesh and blood on his clothes, it must have been a pretty bad bite," Reeves said, moments before driving to University Medical Center to check on the boy. "I'll base my decision on what the doctors say."
Rodgers had climbed over his aunt's back wall at 4212 Garden Place, near Decatur and Charleston boulevards, about 5 p.m. Monday to retrieve a ball.
He'd done it plenty of times before without aggravating the dogs, said his best friend, Thomas Fuss.
"They're really nice dogs," said Fuss, 12. "I've petted them before."
It's still not clear what caused the hefty black and tan dogs to lunge at the boy.
Within seconds, they'd ripped through the skin of Rodgers' left arm and bit at his leg, police said.
Neighbors heard a commotion in the yard and called police. By the time three Metro Police officers arrived at 4213 Hayes Place -- the dogs' home -- Rodgers was fending the animals off with a stick.
"We jumped in the yard and kinda made a human shield" between the dogs and the boy, Officer William Towery said.
Police were able to lift the boy over the wall to paramedics waiting in his aunt's yard. They rushed him by ambulance to UMC.
The dogs kept their distance until the officers tried to climb out of the yard, then began inching closer, Towery said.
"I fully anticipated shooting one of them," Towery said, adding that officers' guns were drawn during the encounter.
The dogs' owners were not at home when the attack occurred, and could not be reached for comment later that night.
But because they were confined to their yard and not a danger to anyone outside the property, there was nothing the city's animal control officers could do.
"It would take a judge's decision before anything could happen to these animals," said animal control officer Lori Masilun. "It would take a civil lawsuit."
The owners will be required to provide proof their dogs have been vaccinated for rabies, and if not, the dogs will be quarantined for 10 days, Masilun said.
Masilun said aggression has nothing to do with breed.
"It's their temperament that makes them aggressive," she said. "They could've been born with it, they could've been raised to be aggressive."
And animals sensing a threat to their turf could easily react aggressively, authorities said.
Reeves said she had her back yard's wooden fence torn down this past summer and replaced with a seven-foot cinder block wall "because of those dogs."
"I've never trusted those dogs," Reeves said. "They've been getting more aggressive recently. I hear them out at 1, 2 in the morning barking and howling, like one's being ganged up on by the other two."
The only time she's ever seen her neighbors, she said, was to have them sign a release permitting her to erect the block wall.
"They seem like nice people," Reeves said. "I don't know what's wrong with those dogs."
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