Revised: Dec 25, 2012; 16:16 GMT
SRUV nominates Tim Long, Editor of the Mint Hill Times, to the Hall of Shame for the month of January 2011.
Mr Long published the remarkable story Are Pit Bulls Mean Dogs? We Ask the President of a Pit Bull Association. The story consists of four softball questions lobbed to Michael Davis, the President of the National American Pit Bull Terrier Association.
Dozens of similar advocacy stories are regularly published but Mr Long's is exceptional for the following reason. Not far from Mint Hill is the town of Waxhaw, NC, where five year old Makayla Woodward was killed by two Pit Bulls not two weeks before Mr Long wrote his story. His ghastly defense of pit bulls on the heels of this horrific attack demonstrates a callous disregard.
The day after Mr Long's story appeared a horse was attacked by a pit bull in Mint Hill, the second time in ten days that Joker had been attacked by the same dog. The owner of the horse, Bill Williamson, suffered a heart attack but was revived by a defibrillator. These attacks followed the earlier attack (December 22) on a 6 year old child and her grandmother, Muriel Price, also from Mint Hill.