SAN ANTONIO – Updated at 2 p.m.:
A jury returned a guilty verdict Monday afternoon. The panel deliberated about four hours. The punishment phase may begin later this afternoon. The couple could face a punishment ranging from probation to a maximum of 10 years in prison.
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Original story:
Jury deliberations started Monday in the dog attack trial of a couple whose pit bull mix attacked and severed the arm of their 72-year-old neighbor.
KSAT 12 News reporter Paul Venema tweeted the development from the courtroom.
Alphonso McCloud and his wife, Stanyelle Miles-McCloud, are facing dangerous dog attack serious bodily injury charges.
Jury deliberations have begun in dangerous dog attack trial. SA couple's pit bull mauled 72-year old widow.
— Paul Venema (@PaulVenema12) January 22, 2018
On Friday, Doris Mixon-Smith told jurors how the 70-pound pit bull mix mauled her while she was working on front yard flower garden on the morning of March 6 after the dog escaped from his owner’s backyard.
"I was fighting for my life," Doris Mixon-Smith told the jurors. “I looked up and he looked like an albino dog … (his) mouth was wide open and I said, I started hollering, 'Please help me. Oh God, please help me. He came at me with his mouth wide open.”
"Did his mouth make contact with your left arm?" prosecutor Daryl Harris asked Mixon-Smith.
"Do you see it here, Mr. Harris?" Mixon-Smith answered, as she gestured toward her upper left arm, which was torn from her body just below the shoulder in the attack.
Mixon-Smith told how a young neighbor managed to free her as she tried to get into her house.
A police officer arrived minutes later and shot the dog to death.
"God covered me, God covered me and I passed out," Mixon-Smith said.
If the couple is found guilty, they could face a punishment ranging from probation to a maximum of 10 years in prison.