(Beth Clifton collage)
Death of Echelbarger was soon followed by death of her husband
CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio––Pickaway County Common Pleas Court Judge Matthew Chafin on April 2, 2025 sentenced mother and son Susan and Adam Withers, ages 62 and 35, to serve a combined total of 33 and a half years in prison for the October 17, 2024 pit bull mauling death of neighbor Jo Ann Echelbarger, 73.
Susan Withers, sentenced to 14 years in prison, and Adam Withers, sentenced to 19 and a half years for involuntary manslaughter and keeping dangerous dogs, will each have to serve at least ten years before seeking parole.
Adam & Susan Withers.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“I wish I could give you more,” says judge
“I wish I could give you more,” Judge Chafin told Susan and Adam Withers, recommending that neither Withers ever again be allowed to keep pets.
Still pending are civil lawsuits filed by Jo Ann Echelbarger’s family against Pickaway County dog warden Preston Schumacher, the condo association and property manager, and both Susan and Adam Withers.
The case drew statewide and even national attention to the exceptional leniency of the Ohio state dangerous dog law, weakened in 2012 under pressure from the Animal Farm Foundation, the Best Friends Animal Society, and the American SPCA.
(See Cincinnati pit bull death indictment; owners guilty in Circleville pit death case.)
Former Montgomery County dog warden Mark Kumpf with pit bull advocate Jane Berkey, who helped Kumpf to undo the Ohio law recognizing pit bulls as inherently “vicious.”
25 fatal attacks, 21 by pit bull, since Ohio dog law was weakened in 2012
Essentially a “one free bite law,” the Ohio dangerous dog law did formerly include language defining pit bulls as “inherently vicious,” therefore requiring pit bull owners to keep their pit bulls behind secure fences, muzzled in public, and insured against liability.
Since the 2012 deletion, Ohio has experienced 25 dog attack fatalities, 21 of them by pit bull.
The sentences issued to Susan and Adam Withers likely are “the longest criminal sentences for a dog attack in state history and will probably be appealed,” Pickaway County Prosecutor Jayme Fountain told Columbus Dispatch reporter Laura Bischoff.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Rolled-up towel instead of a deadbolt
Breaking out of the Withers’ condominium through a front door reportedly “latched” with a rolled-up towel instead of a deadbolt, the pit bulls Apollo and Echo fatally mauled JoAnn Echelbarger, who had been working in her flower bed.
“Her 84-year-old husband, Stanley Echelbarger, who suffered from dementia and Parkinson’s disease, witnessed the mauling from a screened-in porch,” Bischoff wrote.
“She was fully conscious. She was terrorized. She suffered and knew it the entire time,” testified Jo Ann Echelbarger’s son, Bill Rogers, at the sentencing hearing.
“After losing his wife and home, Stanley Echelbarger moved to a nursing home near Columbus. He died in March 2025,” Bischoff wrote.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Loss of wife ended husband’s will to live
The pit bull attack “ended his will to live,” Rogers told the court.
One of the pit bulls was shot by the first responding police officer, in order for him to approach Jo Ann Echelbarger.
The other pit bull ran away, killed another dog near Teays Valley East Middle School, menacing the other dog’s owner, and was finally run over by a Pickway County Sheriff’s Office deputy, but survived until shot by the deputy “in the vicinity of a park and another residence, which included a dog outside in the yard,” according to an Ashville Police Department media statement.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Claimed killer pit bulls were “service dogs”
Between September 8, 2020 and January 2024, reported Adam Conn for WCMH in Columbus, Ohio, “Susan and Adam Withers received as many as seven warnings from their home owners’ association, or lawyers representing The Reserve at Ashton Village, in Ashville.”
One of the warnings, Conn detailed, came after the pit bulls killed another dog.
Despite the Withers’ contention that the pit bulls were “service dogs,” a Pickaway County Court of Common Pleas judge on September 11, 2024 ordered that both pit bulls be removed “immediately and permanently.”
The two pit bulls killed Jo Ann Echelbarger five weeks later.
(Beth Clifton collage)
No prior charges, but prior attack
“Susan Withers,” Conn said, “had no prior charges related to dog ownership.”
However, “One of the dogs that killed Echelbarger had previously been designated as a dangerous dog after he attacked another condo resident, Kimberlee Black, and killed her puppy in October 2023,” Bischoff recounted.
“Under Ohio law, the Witherses did not have to put their dog down after the attack on Black. Instead, they were ticketed and required to buy a dangerous dog tag, post a sign on their property, keep the dog confined, and walk him on a muzzle and short chain leash.
“Susan Withers obtained the dog tag 271 days after the attack on Black.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Charged twice, got one slap on the wrist
“Adam Withers has previously been charged with owning a dangerous dog twice, facing two counts in May 2024 and one count in December. 2023,” Conn said.
Adam Withers “was also charged with owning an unconfined dog” after the attack on Black in October 2023, Conn reported.
But “The dangerous dog charges were dismissed in court, with prosecutors citing insufficient evidence, while the defendant paid a fine for the unconfined dog charge and waived his right to a trial,” Conn said.
Laura Bischoff.
(Facebook photo)
Nine-month investigation
Noted Bischoff, “The Echelbarger case was featured in a nine-month investigation,” for which Bischoff herself was lead author, “published by the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and Canton Repository into how dangerous dog attacks across Ohio cause disfigurement, amputations, psychological trauma, and sometimes deaths.”
(See Two more dog attack dead, but USA Today gets hep to the pit bull jive.)
Beth & Merritt Clifton with friends.
But while calling for stronger legislation, Bischoff and her many sources fell short of calling for either restoration of a breed-specific state dog law, or abolition of the one-free-bite definition of a dangerous dog.
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The post Mother & son get 14 & 19.5 years for pit bull death of Jo Ann Echelbarger appeared first on Animals 24-7.
