Five-year-old girl mauled in face by emotional support pitbull at airport, mother says

Mirna Gonzalez says attack left daughter with severed tear duct, disfigured upper lip and permanent scars

The emotional support pitbull like this one allegedly bit Gabriela Gonzalez in the face at Portland International Airport (Getty iStock)

The mother of a five-year-old girl mauled in the face by an “emotional support” pitbull at an airport in Oregon has filed a $1.1m lawsuit.

Mirna Gonzalez says her daughter Gabriela suffered permanent injuries when another passenger's dog bit her as they waited to board their plane at Portland International Airport on 18 December 2017.

While Ms Gonzalez left her children momentarily to buy a coffee, Gabriella allegedly asked the dog's owner if she could pet it. But as soon as she reached out her hand it bit her in the face.

The Port of Portland, Alaska Airlines and the owner of the dog are named in the $1.1m lawsuit Ms Gonzalez filed on behalf of her daughter on Monday.

The lawsuit says the dog owner, Michelle Brannan, should have known her dog "possessed vicious propensities". It also blames the airport and airline for creating "an unreasonable risk of harm to the public" by allowing the dog into the passenger area without being inside a crate.

The incident is one of numerous high-profile allegations of bad emotional-support animal behaviour at airports as airlines and the federal government have scrambled to respond to a growing number of complaints, ranging from poor toilet training to nasty bites.

The episodes have proliferated over the past two years, fuelling a debate over how the animals should be regulated while travelling. In June 2017, a 70-pound emotional support dog bit a man in the face as he sat down in his window seat on a Delta Air Lines flight departing from Atlanta, leaving him needing 28 stitches.

In February 2018, an emotional support dog chomped at a child's forehead on a Southwest Airlines flight departing from Phoenix, leaving her with only a scrape but causing panic.

In Gabriella's case, she had to undergo tear-duct surgery, leaving her with permanent scars, her attorney, Chad Stavley, told the Washington Post. The pitbull severed her tear duct and disfigured her upper lip, leaving a chunk of it missing, according to a graphic photo of her injuries provided by Mr Stavley.

Mr Stavley said he hopes the lawsuit, filed on Monday in Multnomah County Circuit Court, will push airports and airlines to strictly enforce the policies surrounding emotional support animals that most created in response to the 2017 and 2018 dog bites.

The new rules intend to clamp down on fraudulent emotional support animals or service animals – people's house pets disguised as helpers – while also making sure the animals that people really need are kept away from other passengers as much as possible.

Mr Stavley said he plans to investigate whether the dog that bit Gabriella was a legitimate emotional support dog. The dog's owner, Michelle Brannan, claims that it was, according to the lawsuit.

She did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday night. It is unclear if she still owns the dog.

According to a December 2017 report from KATU 2 News, the dog was quarantined at an animal shelter for 10 days following the attack, and the owner was cited by police for failing to crate the dog.

“There's a lot of abuse of this emotional support animal situation,” Mr Stavley said, “and folks who have legitimate service animals – people who are blind and need guide dogs and the like – are kind of getting thrown into the same boat [as emotional support animals]. It shines a poor light on those folks.”

The Port of Portland and Alaska Airlines, which Ms Brannan and the Gonzalez family were flying that day, both declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

Alaska Airlines was among the airlines that changed their policy on emotional support animals in 2018. The airline's new rule, which went into effect in October, requires that owners keep their dog or cat – the only animals allowed aboard – in a carrier or on a leash at all times and provide 48-hour notice and appropriate documentation ahead of their flights.

“We are making these changes now based on a number of recent incidents where the inappropriate behaviour of emotional support animals has impacted and even injured our employees, other guests and service animals,” Ray Prentice, Alaska Airlines director of customer advocacy, said in a statement in April 2018.

“Most animals cause no problems. However, over the last few years, we have observed a steady increase in incidents from animals who haven't been adequately trained to behave in a busy airport setting or on a plane, which has prompted us to strengthen our policy.”

The support-animal incidents have not been limited to dog bites. One service dog, a golden retriever named Eleanor Rigby, gave birth to puppies at a terminal in Tampa in June, though people didn't complain very much about that.

An emotional-support hamster named Pebbles was flushed down the toilet by its owner in February 2018 after Spirit Airlines informed the student she could not take the pet with her on the flight from Baltimore.

Another man got angry at United Airlines for denying Dexter, his Instagram-famous emotional-support peacock, a seat on the plane from Newark, even though he had purchased a ticket for the bird.

“We explained this to the customer on three separate occasions before they arrived at the airport,” an airline spokeswoman told the Washington Post.

When United announced its policy change in February 2018, the airline said it had witnessed a 75 per cent increase in customers bringing emotional support animals aboard.

When Delta announced changes with its policy in January 2018, the airline reported an 84 per cent increase “in reported animal incidents” since 2016, including urination and defecation and “acts of aggression” from the animals, “behaviour not typically seen in these animals when properly trained and working”.

The concerns from the airlines also prompted the Transportation Department to review its own rules for service and support animals last year. The agency intended to crack down on the “fraudulent use” of animals who aren't really service animals and to make sure measures are in place to prevent badly behaved pets from boarding flights. It has yet to issue a final rule change.

In the meantime, Mr Stavley said, Gabriella Gonzalez will not be boarding any flights anytime soon. The girl developed a fear of airports, he said, as well as a fear of petting dogs.

Washington Post