COURTESY PHOTO BY GENE SIMPSON Daemin Parinas, 4, was bitten on the face by a dog in a state housing project on Maui, the second such attack on the boy in two years. His mother, Aubrey Parinas, said the attack occurred near the screen door leading to her home at Makani Kai Hale in Waiehu.

Group probes
dog attack

Maui Humane Society officials look
into the biting of a 4-year-old

WAILUKU » One of two dogs that attacked a 4-year-old boy at a state housing project is under investigation by the Maui Humane Society.

Daemin Parinas was bitten on the face by a dog that was described as a young pitbull while playing outside his home at Makani Kai Hale, a 29-unit low-income project in central Maui. The units are operated by the state Housing and Community Development Corporation of Hawaii.

His mother, Aubrey, said her son was following her into the home about 3:30 p.m. Monday, when she heard him scream.

"When I turned around, I saw both of them on him," several feet from her rear screen door, she said.

Aubrey Parinas said the dog that bit her son belongs to a woman who lives in the housing complex -- and the same dog has attacked a different child.

Parinas said the dogs, owned by different owners, were not leashed.

Parinas took Daemin to the Kaiser Clinic in Wailuku, where he received three stitches to a puncture wound below the left part of his lip. He also had scratches on the left side of his face.

She said this is the second time her son has been bitten in the last two years in the housing complex. The first time, he was bitten on his bottom while walking away from a dog leashed to a fire hydrant, she said. That dog was different than the one that bit her son Monday, Parinas said.

The owner of the dog, who declined to be identified, said she didn't know how her dog got out of her home or what happened to the child.

According to state Housing and Community Development rules, a tenant must receive permission to raise a dog in the project.

Pets are required to remain in the dwellings and may not be leashed to any stationary object outside the tenant's apartment, the rules said.

State officials operating the project were unavailable for comment.

Society sued for
killing 2 dogs

WAILUKU » The Maui Humane Society is being sued for alleged negligence in killing two dogs, including one pregnant with puppies.

The lawsuit alleges that the dogs' owner, Janet Miller, had sent a request on Aug. 11, 2004, for an administrative hearing to challenge the society's charges that the two dogs had killed fowl at Maui Tropical Plantation in Waikapu.

Miller's dogs, which were seized by society officials on her property, were killed on Aug. 19, 2004, before the hearing occurred, according to the lawsuit filed last week.

Miller was acquitted in December 2004 during a criminal trial related to her dogs, after the sole eyewitness who was a groundskeeper testified pictures of the dead dogs were not the same dogs who killed the fowl, the lawsuit alleges.

Humane Society Executive Director Jocelyn Bouchard said her organization was not negligent.

"We are confident that we did what was necessary to alert Ms. Miller about the situation with her dogs, and we are confident that this will be upheld in the courtroom," Bouchard said.