Case Isn’t Over for Beaten Dog’s Owner : Reaction: She says she’s shocked by jury’s acquittal of man whose toddler was bitten by her Akita mix. ‘How can something so vicious be OK?’

SANTA ANA —  The owner of a dog fatally beaten with a baseball bat after it mauled a toddler said Tuesday that she was shocked and saddened by a jury’s decision to acquit the animal’s killer.

“I just don’t understand the jury; the whole system needs to change,” said April Wyld, 28, of Huntington Beach, speaking out for the first time since the not-guilty verdict was reached Monday in Orange County Municipal Court in Westminster. “They’re saying what he did was OK. How can something so vicious be OK? I’m sickened by the whole thing.”

Jurors deliberated about three hours before acquitting Alan Roberts, a 30-year-old roofer, of a misdemeanor animal cruelty charge. Roberts admitted taking a baseball bat to Wyld’s pet, an 8-month-old Akita mix, after the animal mauled Roberts’ 19-month-old son, Andrew, outside a Huntington Beach coffeehouse July 30.

The boy, who is still recovering from his injuries, needed 60 stitches to close his facial wounds. The Akita mix, named Kaya, had to be euthanized after being struck about 15 times, according to witnesses.

The case has gained widespread media attention and has been the topic of heated debates with animal rights activists pitted against those who sympathized with a distraught father enraged at the attack on his young son. Roberts’ defense attorney compared the attack to a rape and urged jurors to put themselves in the father’s place.

But Wyld, who still weeps when she recalls the attack on her pet, said the law should have decided the case.

“The question for the jurors was, was he or was he not cruel to an animal, not whether he was cruel to an animal because of whatever reason,” Wyld said. “They decided the case based on emotion.”

Wyld said jurors would have felt differently if they witnessed the attack as she did. Roberts, wielding a baseball bat, approached her about an hour after the attack and said “My son is dead,” she said. He began beating the animal as Wyld watched in horror and then ran away.

She said she believes Roberts said his son had died so he could justify what he was about to do. She said she also found “laughable” Roberts’ testimony that he never intended to harm the animal. While he portrayed himself as a concerned parent, he should have been at the hospital with his son instead of hunting down her dog, she said.

And he should have called an animal control officer, she said. Wyld said she would have had the dog euthanized if Roberts had asked.

“It would have killed me to do that, but I would have,” she said. “Instead, he decided he would be judge and jury.”

Wyld said it is unfortunate that the debate surround the case tries to compare the worth of a child to the worth of a dog.

“Who is to say that that dog is less important to me than your child is to you?” she asked. “Maybe I can never have children. Maybe that dog is like a child to me. Who is to say?”

Wyld said the 55-pound dog attacked Andrew after managing to escape from her apartment and run around the corner, his leash still attached to his collar. She called his escape an accident that should not be used to blame her for the attack.

“The dog is my responsibility, but I don’t think there is a responsibility when there is an accident,” she said.

Wyld said she is considering getting another dog, but that for now the pain of missing Kaya is still too fresh.

“That dog was my life, he was so special,” she said. Wyld said she understands that Roberts suffered a tragic loss too, and once tried to apologize to him when he returned to the scene of the beating with his attorney.

“I yelled out that I was sorry,” she recalled. “He turned around and said to me, ‘I’ll see you in court.’ ”

The case is far from over, however. Roberts sued Wyld shortly after the attack, and Wyld is countersuing.