13-year-old Daniel Decembre should be looking forward to his teenage years and boisterous times with his friends. Instead, the young boy can never visit friends, he has them come over instead. The looks of horror and fright on the faces of people around him when he steps out of the house have turned this child into a social recluse. To get to know Daniel, onlookers first have to get past the sight of his face, scarred from a pit bull attack, with scar tissue on one ear and the other one missing.

The attack happened at Ridgewood Park Elementary School five years ago. Daniel was waiting for an after school tutoring class, when a pit bull raced through the open gates of the school and made for a bunch of kids. Daniel was among them. The kids tried to escape, and so did Daniel, but he tripped and fell. Within seconds, the 50 pound dog was on him mauling his face. Teachers reportedly tried to chase the dog away, and used objects to hit the dog. Finally, one teacher managed to chase the dog away by hitting him with an umbrella. By then, the damage had been done. Daniel was in second grade at the time of the accident.

Since then, Daniel has had a total of five surgeries to correct the damage to his face, but still needs more work done. His parents say it will take more surgeries to get rid of the large lump of scar tissue on his ear, and reconstructive surgery to attach a prosthetic ear. He has trouble with the tear duct in his eye.

His physical scars are the kind that will be healed to an extent by plastic surgery, but the mental and emotional scars are too deep to ignore. Daniel can’t go out without making his father stand by the gate to see him off, and can’t hope for a normal reaction from people who see him for the first time. There aren’t too many kids that are willing to be friends with a boy who has what they cruelly call a “scar face.” And as Daniel takes his place in high school, taunts like this can be expected to become worse.

His parents settled a lawsuit with the Orange County School Board for $2 million, but under law, the school board only has to pay $200,000 unless the Florida state legislature approves the rest. The settlement has already been passed by the Florida Senate, but has yet to be approved by the Florida House.

Officials at the Orange County School Board have admitted that they settled because they feared that a jury would award a higher sum to Daniel based on his extensive injuries.

There’s no doubt about what the state legislature should do in this case - it should pass the settlement, so that Daniel’s parents have a way of paying for the very expensive facial reconstruction surgeries that the boy will need more of. The Orange County School Board will have to pay the remaining $1.8 million settlement if it does pass, and it’s only appropriate that they do so.

Whining that the school board is already financially stressed doesn’t help matters – the gates of the school were open at the time of the attack. This was a school that had complained many times about the presence of dangerous dogs in the vicinity. Why then did they leave the gates open? And why was no action taken by the school board regarding these complaints? If you knew that there were vicious dogs sniffing around your school, wouldn’t your priority be to make sure that the kids were safe? Basic common sense should tell you that the gates should have been shut.

We feel the anguish of Daniel’s family. This boy has been through a traumatic experience, and it’s high time that the family was compensated for their suffering.

If you have been injured in a dog attack, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury lawyer. Contact an attorney at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.