Inside the Criminal Charges in Golden Dog Attack That Killed Mary Gehring

The First Judicial District DA's office announced yesterday, October 24, that two people — 33-year-old Kayla Mooney and 29-year-old Victor Bentley — have been criminally charged in connection with a dog attack in Golden last month that killed Mary Gehring, 88, and seriously injured her twelve-year-old great-grandson.

Mooney, Gehring's granddaughter and the mother of the boy, faces four charges related to unlawful ownership of a dangerous dog (two felonies, two misdemeanors), while Bentley, her significant other, has been accused of two unlawful-ownership-of-a-dangerous-dog counts, one a felony, the other a misdemeanor. Two dogs were involved in the attacks, a pair of seven-year-old male pit bulls: Knoxville, owned by Bentley, and Diablo, owned by Mooney.

The arrest affidavits, which recap the September 14 incident and its aftermath, are close to identical, and contain heartbreaking details.

The location of the attack was a residence on the 15700 block of West 1st Avenue; authorities were called to that location after the boy ran to a neighbor's house for help. Upon their arrival, patrol officers with the Golden Police Department soon discovered Gehring, whose face was "mauled and bloody." The dogs were standing by her, and when the cops approached, Diablo lunged at him, prompting an officer to fire a "less lethal round" from a shotgun. The dogs responded by running around the backyard and circling the officers until additional officers arrived and were able to remove Gehring from the scene. She died days later at an area hospital from injuries the affidavit describes in gruesome detail; the boy also required hospitalization but survived his wounds.

Among those interviewed following the attack were Gehring's son, Robert "Robbie" Mooney, and the boy's younger sister, age nine, as well as Mooney and Bentley. Robbie said he'd never seen either Knoxville or Diablo exhibit aggressive behavior, and Bentley dubbed Knoxville, who was blind in one eye as a result of an accident related to fireworks, an "ear nibbler" and a "gentle lover."

Days later, the boy was quizzed. He said he had gone to the house on West 1st Avenue with his sister and great-grandmother to pick up books for church, and while there, he tried to move the dogs into his mother's room because he was afraid they might get excited and scratch Gehring. They didn't obey even when he raised his voice, he said, and Knoxville curled up under a table. When he tried to pet Knoxville, the dog snapped at him "and maybe split his pinky." The boy said he believed that because Knoxville "tasted blood, his 'animal instinct' made him want more," and the dog soon bit his ankle and only released him after being kicked in the face.

The boy had told his great-grandmother to leave, but she refused and encouraged the children to go to a neighbor's home for help while she tried to control Knoxville. Meanwhile, the boy's sister said Diablo went after Knoxville; she interpreted this action as trying to "protect the family." As she remembered it, Diablo had been "all chewed up" by Knoxville in the process, but a necropsy of the dogs elicited "no evidence to show that the dogs fought or injured each other," leading investigators to conclude that both had attacked Gehring.

Knoxville and Diablo, both of which were subsequently euthanized, are mainly referred to simply as dogs, rather than pit bulls, in the affidavits. Denver lifted its ban on pit bulls in 2020 and Aurora followed in 2021; Golden doesn't have a ban on the breeds that are characterized as pit bulls.

Click to read the arrest affidavits of Kayla Mooney and Victor Bentley.