Compensation for dog bite victim

The owner of a staffordshire cross dog which clamped its jaws onto the face of a girl playing at Christchurch's Jellie Park has been ordered to pay $3500 to her family for emotional harm.

"One of the major points of the sentencing will be to help the little girl who is the innocent victim in all of this," said Simon Shamy, counsel for Robert John Lees, who lives in a Greers Road house near the park.

Judge Raoul Neave also fined Lees $250 but said most of the penalty would go to the family "to restore as best we can, in the limited way that money would enable us to do".

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