Palmerston dog owner April Burbur faces Supreme Court over ‘savage’ mauling of Rhonda Matthews
An 11-year-old American bulldog Mastiff cross who ripped the arms off a 60-year-old woman in Palmerston has been compared to a fatal crocodile attack.
Police & Courts
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A 60-year-old woman whose arms were “torn off” in a savage animal attack wept before the dog’s owner, telling the Palmerston mother: “I forgive you”.
Rhonda Matthews was left alone in a stranger’s house when she was viciously attacked by an 11-year-old American bulldog Mastiff cross in the early hours of Sunday, April 9, 2022.
Ms Matthews was discovered bloodied on the ground as an “unrestrained, uncontained” savage dog roamed the Palmerston backyard.
Due to the severity of the mauling, both of her arms were amputated from above the elbow.
The dog’s owner April Burbur was found guilty of negligently causing serious harm by a Supreme Court jury on November 25.
Yet in Bubur’s sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Ms Matthews told the Supreme Court that she did not want the Palmerston mother-of-five to go to jail over that horrific event.
In her victim impact statement, Ms Matthews said she reunited with Burbur more than a year after the savage dog mauling.
“April started crying when she saw me, she hugged me and kept crying,” Ms Matthews said
“She told me she was sorry. We cried together.
“I told her ‘I forgive you’.”
Bubur’s defence barrister Joshua Bach told the court that the Palmerston mother did not foresee that the danger posed to the sleeping stranger in her house by Wilfred, who was restrained — albeit “inadequately” — in the backyard.
Mr Bach said the 34-year-old had sought counselling as she continued to be haunted by the trauma and remorse from that night.
It is understood this is the first time a dangerous dog owner has been found criminally liable for negligence for a mauling in the Territory.
In his sentencing submission, Mr Bach compared the dog attack with a fatal crocodile attack in Kakadu National Park in October 2002.
Tour guide Glenn Robless pleaded guilty to making a dangerous omission causing death after he took a group of nine visitors on a night-time dip at the Sandy Billabong off Nourlangie Creek — despite signs warning the water was teeming with crocodiles.
As they swam, a 4.6m, 400kg saltwater crocodile snuck up and killed 23-year-old German backpacker, Isabel von Jordan.
In 2003, Robless was given a fully suspended three year prison sentence.
Mr Bach said just like the tour operator, Burbur had failed to properly assess the true risk posed by the situation and should also receive a non-custodial sentence.
However prosecutor Deborah Mandie instead advocated for a home detention order.
Ms Mandie said unlike the crocodile attack: “This is where the wild animal was under her care and control”.
During the four-day trial the jury heard that Wilfred had been reported to the City of Darwin twice in the previous 15 months, after hospitalising both Burbur’s then-partner and her aunt in separate attacks.
Justice Meredith Huntingford said she would need time to consider the sentencing submissions, and ordered community corrections and home detention reports.
Burbur will return to the Supreme Court on January 29.
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