Parents spared jail after their three-month-old daughter mauled to death by one of their 19 husky dogs

14 August 2023, 13:13 | Updated: 15 August 2023, 00:47

A couple have been spared jail after their pet Siberian husky mauled their baby daughter to death.

Vince King and Karen Alcock’s Siberian husky, named Blizzard, killed baby Kyra King in woodland on March 6 2022.

Lincoln Crown Court was told that the animal, one of 19 kept by the pair, jumped out of their and fatally mauled Kyra after the family had been racing the dogs in Lincolnshire.

The dog, which will be put down, left Kyra with multiple head and neck injuries, and her parents performed CPR in an attempt to revive her.

Handing the pair suspended sentences on Monday, Judge Sjolin Knight said the incident resulted from a “tragic conjunction of circumstances”.

She said: “This is a tragic case, and I have no doubt that both of you wish every day you could wind the clock back so that incident never happened.

“There was nothing to trigger [Blizzard’s] attack on Kyra, but on this occasion she was dangerously out of control.

“Dog ownership is a privilege and for many a pleasure, but it comes with a heavy burden under the Dangerous Dogs Act.

“[Blizzard] did an awful thing which neither of you expected and will weigh heavily upon you for the rest of your lives.

“I don’t believe that this incident was reasonably foreseeable but believe it was a momentary lapse of an otherwise good system.

“It is appropriate to suspend both sentences.”

Alcock was handed an eight month prison sentence, suspended for two years and was ordered to undertake 80 hours' unpaid work. King received 10 months' imprisonment, suspended for two years, and 100 hours of unpaid work.

A destruction order was today granted at court for the dog.

King and his then partner Karen Alcock were at the woodland near Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, on the evening of the horrific incident, the court heard.

They had brought the dogs with them, transported in a van that had been modified to contain lockable cages. The dogs were used for racing instead of being domestic pets and had been split into two teams to pull homemade sleds around the wooded area.

While the rear and sliding side doors of the van were closed, Blizzard leapt over the partition separating the cages from the van’s front seats, ran out of the open passenger door and attacked Kyra as she slept in her pram.

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Despite the efforts of King and Alcock, Kyra was pronounced dead at the scene and the pair were arrested.

Blizzard had been bought by King six years earlier, had been racing for three years and was pregnant at the time.

King, 55, had raced dogs for 20 years after working in the military and also bred huskies, and on the day of the incident had taken his dogs out for a practice run on a well-known route about three miles long.

Alcock, a 41-year-old veterinary nurse, had been with King since 2019 and accompanied him on the racing runs, with the pair working “as a team”.

Kyra had been taken along for the runs from just five days old and was described by the judge as a “very much wanted and loved baby”.