2 dogs blamed in killing remain at home
DECHERD, Tenn. ' Two dogs that were implicated this week in the killing of a Franklin County woman remained at their owner's home yesterday.
Dr. Ephraim Gammada will be allowed to keep the two dogs, mixed breeds that are mostly Great Pyrenees, at his home, and a third dog implicated in the attack, a mixed-breed dog belonging to Ronnie Swann, will remain at the local pound, said James Henry "Bub" Wilkinson, Franklin County rabies control officer.
The three dogs have been linked via forensic evidence to the May 6 mauling of Franklin County library assistant Dianna Acklen, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said this week.
Wilkinson said Gammada's dogs are locked inside a pen on the doctor's property, which is on Knights Church Road, where the Acklen and Swann families also live.
Swann's mixed-breed dog ' which, according to the TBI, fathered Gammada's two dogs ' has been at the pound since the mauling, along with another dog belonging to Swann, a chocolate Labrador retriever that the TBI largely cleared in the case.
Asked why Gammada's dogs are being allowed to stay at home while Swann's dogs remain in the pound, Wilkinson said he had not been told to do anything else with Gammada's dogs.
Acklen was attacked while taking her daily walk on Knights Church Road, where she lived for many years.
Her body was found on the Swann property with 200 to 300 bites from her shoulders down, the TBI stated. She died the same day.
The bites on Acklen's body are consistent with the bite of one of the Great Pyrenees-mix dogs owned by Gammada, while the bites of two other canines, a second Great Pyrenees mix owned by the doctor and a mixed-breed dog owned by Swann, are not "as consistent," TBI said.
A reporter who called Gammada's Winchester office Friday was told the doctor was seeing patients at the time. A phone call placed to the office later was answered by a message recording device.
When a reporter visited his home later in the day, a man who came to the gate said the doctor was not at home and was not available to talk.
Gammada has previously told The Tennessean that his dogs were in their pen when he left home the day of May 6 and that they were in the pen when he arrived home that day. ?
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