COLUMBIA TWP. — The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has kept an extensive file on exotic animal owner Sam Mazzola and urged the county sheriff and prosecutor to charge the Columbia Township man with reckless homicide in the fatal Aug. 19 mauling of 24-year-old Brent Kandra by a bear.
Letters were sent Tuesday to Lorain County Prosecutor Dennis Will and county Sheriff Phil Stammitti by PETA Foundation General Counsel Jeffrey Kerr stating that Mazzola committed reckless homicide because “he perversely disregarded a known risk that his conduct was likely to cause the death of Kandra.”
“Mazzola belongs behind bars, not his animals,” Kerr said. “They should be released to appropriate sanctuaries —they certainly don’t belong in what amounts to squalid dog runs.”
After Kandra, of Elyria, was killed while feeding the bear, Mazzola told newspaper reporters that he was attacked by one of his bears and had 2,000 stitches in his face and reconstructive surgery — proof that he knows the animals are dangerous, Kerr said.
PETA also asked Stammitti to investigate Mazzola for euthanizing a bear without a permit and to determine whether his animals have been properly exercised and fed.
County Prosecutor Dennis Will said he hadn’t seen the letter from PETA and that he couldn’t comment on whether a reckless homicide charge would be considered.
“We’ll find out what the facts are and see if there’s anything that should be reviewed,” Will said.
Detectives are working on a report that will be forwarded to Will’s office, said Capt. James Drozdowski of the sheriff’s department.
The prosecutor’s office will decide whether to seek charges and what charges could be filed, but Drozdowski said he found the letter intriguing.
“We’ll look at it to see if any of it holds water,” Drozdowski said.
When asked if any similar charges had been filed against other people whose animals killed humans, PETA’s senior media coordinator David Perle supplied information on convictions of individuals in a number of fatal dog maulings.
PETA cited more than a dozen cases, including one in 2001 that made national headlines when two people were found guilty of manslaughter in the mauling of Diane Whipple. One of the dog’s owners in the case was initially convicted of second-degree murder in 2002, but that decision is still embroiled in the California courts.
Mazzola has been on PETA’s radar for more than 10 years, and Kerr’s letter included the following from a file the organization has kept:
On May 16, 2010, in a U.S. Bankruptcy Court filing, Mazzola admitted possessing eight black bears that “to the best of the debtor’s knowledge, poses or is alleged to pose a threat of imminent and identifiable harm to the public health or safety;
Although Mazzola has characterized Kandra as a “trained” caretaker, he was trained by Mazzola who described his training methods as being “hands on,” where trainees “learn by mistakes,” for example if you “stick your hand where it shouldn’t be, you learn pretty quick (sic) not to do it anymore.” Furthermore, according to Mazzola, Kandra began working with his animals seven years before his death at age 24, which means that Kandra was a minor when he began his “training.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service cited Mazzola for violating the animal handling provision eight times between 2003 and 2006. Each citation was based on Mazzola’s failure to provide sufficient distance or barriers between the public when he allowed customers to enter an enclosure with dangerous wild animals.
In a 2006 news article, two high school wrestlers, one a 112-pound freshman and the other a 140-pound senior, bragged that they regularly wrestled with Mazzola’s lions, tigers and bears but they were not able to wrestle “with the bigger animals” because “injuries could occur.”
In a 1997 article regarding a charge against Mazzola of illegally possessing firearms, he was quoted as saying, “What am I supposed to do if something happens? Call the sheriff? ‘Help! I’ve got a 700-pound tiger after me. Oh no, now it’s killing my neighbor’?”
Margo Dodge, one of Mazzola’s neighbors, said her late husband was wrestled to the ground and pinned by a bear for 20 minutes after one of Mazzola’s bears escaped. Her husband was not killed in that attack.
The letter also alleges that Mazzola is in violation of Ohio’s Endangered Species Act because black bears are classified as endangered. A special permit is required to kill a black bear, and it does not appear that Mazzola possessed the required permit.
“Mazzola has a lengthy history, spanning decades, of intentionally disregarding laws and regulations promulgated to protect humans from the dangerous animals he keeps, and to protect the animals themselves from harm,” the letter stated.
Mazzola, who said he was the only witness to Kandra’s mauling by the bear named Iroquois, said he had the bear euthanized at the family’s request. One of Kandra’s uncles, Richard Kandra, said after his nephew’s memorial service that he does not believe the family gave a clear instruction for the bear to be killed.
In a news release, PETA’s Director Debbie Leahy said “Mazzola has kept these wild animals in what are essentially dog runs, deprived them of everything that is natural and important to them, and squeezed profit out of them at every turn, so it’s no surprise that they would bite back. Mazzola was well aware of the risk of injury or death, and we believe that the evidence shows that his recklessness cost this young man his life.”
Mazzola did not return phone calls Tuesday. On Monday, Mazzola said the Friendship APL had recently visited his barn to check on the welfare of the animals.
Greg Willey, the APL’s executive director, said an APL humane officer went to the facility on the day of the fatal mauling, but the APL does not approve of what is happening there.
“Do I think it’s a dangerous environment? Absolutely,” Willey said. “My hope is that the investigation will close him down.”
Reporter Brad Dicken also contributed to this story.

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