A man says he was bitten and seriously injured by a Pierce County Sheriff's Department K-9 while working underneath his car as authorities pursued a vehicle theft suspect, according to a recently filed lawsuit.
Harold Ashworth accused authorities of failing to control the dog or prevent it from entering private property, leading to the K-9 attacking him as he was changing the oil filter on his Subaru at a friend's house in South Hill, the legal complaint said.
The lawsuit, filed in Pierce County Superior Court on March 27, seeks unspecified damages to cover medical expenses, lost earning capacity and legal fees stemming from the December 2022 incident.
Pierce County, which is alleged to have acted negligently, carelessly and unlawfully, is named as the defendant in the case.
"Pierce County generally does not comment on pending litigation," said Adam Faber, a spokesperson for the county Prosecuting Attorney's Office, which represents the county in legal matters.
Sheriff's deputies had been chasing a reportedly stolen Kia and ultimately found the vehicle abandoned, according to law enforcement incident reports provided to The News Tribune by the law firm Brett McCandlis Brown & Conner, PLLC, which is representing Ashworth in the suit. Authorities called in a K-9 unit to track the suspect, and the dog — whose name is Brix and had been on a 30-foot leash — homed in on Ashworth, who reportedly matched the suspect's description.
"He's sort of generally in the vicinity of this area where they're searching for this stolen car (suspect)," Ashworth's attorney David Brown said in an interview, adding that his client "100%" denied involvement with the stolen vehicle.
Ashworth was pulled by the K-9 from underneath the Subaru he'd been working on and "got pretty chewed up," according to Brown. He said Ashworth suffered multiple bites on his left arm. Photos of the injuries provided by the law firm showed that Ashworth was also bitten on his left ribcage.
Law enforcement reports written shortly after the incident, and reviewed by The News Tribune, indicated that deputies observed Ashworth to be combative following being bitten and that he had refused to provide his identity. Deputies also expressed skepticism that he'd been simply tuning up a vehicle when Brix found him.
"Ashworth did a good job of playing off that he was just laying under the car working on it and not involved, that's why he was not arrested immediately that day," deputy John Munson, Brix's handler, wrote in his report.
Ashworth was not charged with a crime. A different individual reported by another deputy to be a potential suspect also was not charged, court records show. Brown said, to the best of his knowledge, no one had been arrested in connection to the stolen Kia.
Brown, who described Ashworth as a "poor guy ... just minding his own business," said his client required months of recovery after getting attacked and still faces lingering nerve issues in his left arm, which has lessened his mobility.
"I would just hope there's a lot more caution and discretion before we send these (dogs) out where they're biting people," Brown said. "It seems really concerning to me that there wasn't a little more control over this animal."
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