Son’s mauling gets mom year in jail

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Son’s mauling gets mom year in jail
Boy, 3, entered dog pen as Swindler used phone.


By James Goodwin of the Tribune’s staff

FULTON — The ratcheting of handcuffs across the wrists of Terri Swindler echoed in the courtroom yesterday after Circuit Judge Gary Oxenhandler imposed a maximum jail term on the Callaway County mother.

Swindler’s inattention led to the March 27 mauling death of her son by the family’s 93-pound Rottweiler. She must serve one year in jail for endangering the welfare of her son, Wesley, and a concurrent sentence of 30 days for biting her 3-year-old before he died.

Wesley’s lifeless body was found in the dog pen in his back yard after his mother let him go outside by himself for 10 to 15 minutes as she talked on a cordless phone, she testified in Callaway County Circuit Court.

"It was probably my fault that my son died, and I know that if I could go back I would. But I can’t," Swindler told the court before she was sentenced.

As part of a plea bargain, Swindler pleaded guilty in June to endangerment and third-degree assault, and prosecutors dropped a felony abuse charge. The autopsy performed after Wesley’s mauling revealed that a human had also bitten him.

Swindler told the court that she let her daughter, another youngster, bite Wesley before the canine attack because he had bitten her. After the boy bit his sister a second time, Swindler said she bit the boy.

"That’s how I was taught to break biting," the 31-year-old mother said.

Swindler’s daughter, Trisha, is in foster care.

Seeing autopsy photos of Wesley, Swindler sobbed during the testimony of a registered nurse who responded to the dog attack.

The nurse said Swindler seemed suspiciously unmoved by Wesley’s death.

"Immediately, I did not ask who she was," said Sheila Langlotz, a Staff for Life helicopter nurse. "She did not seem upset enough to be the child’s mother."

Under cross-examination, Langlotz said it was possible that Swindler simply wasn’t expressing the pain she might have been feeling.

Swindler testified that she had "lost it" while talking to her father-in-law before the nurse arrived.

"I started screaming, ‘My baby. My baby,’" she said.

Swindler, who is unemployed, testified that she once lost a job as a school bus driver for First Student because she left a child on the bus.

In a final argument, Columbia attorney Jim Rutter, who defended Swindler, said that all parents are guilty of losing sight of their children at least once. Wesley’s death should not be considered in Swindler’s punishment for third-degree assault and child endangerment, he said.

"She is not here to be punished for committing a homicide. She is here because she committed two misdemeanor offenses, and she came here with no prior record," Rutter said.

Assistant Prosecutor Carol England told Oxenhandler, "I would ask for more" of a punishment, "but the law says that’s not doable."

Swindler said the day Wesley died was not the first time she let him out of their home by himself in the unincorporated town of Stephens, about 1½ miles north of the Millersburg exit in Callaway County. The boy liked to climb on a trampoline in the unfenced yard, she said.

She and her father, Tom Burts of Mexico, Mo., testified that they never saw the 2-year-old Rottweiler act aggressively toward other people, including children. After the attack, police told Swindler that the dog — who was called "Big One" or "Biggie" — might have to be destroyed.

"I asked them if I could do it," she said yesterday. "I never fired a gun in my life, but I wanted to do it, up close and personal."

The dog was later destroyed at the family’s request, but not by Swindler.

Wesley’s father, who is estranged from the boy’s mother, testified yesterday that sentencing Swindler to jail would serve no useful purpose.

"The two people she has to answer to are Wesley and God, and that day will come," Wayne Swindler said.