Dog’s Owner Jailed for Ordering Attack : Hate crime: Paul Michael Kuns, who is white, gets six months for sending pit bull after Carl Johnson, a black teen-ager.

VAN NUYS — In an attack described as a hate crime by prosecutors, a West Hollywood man has been sentenced to six months in jail for ordering his pit bull to attack a black teen-ager who was skateboarding in North Hollywood.

Paul Michael Kuns, a 38-year-old white man, was sentenced immediately after a Van Nuys Municipal Court jury convicted him on misdemeanor charges of assault and interfering with a person’s civil rights.

Following two hours of deliberations, the jury determined Thursday that Kuns sent his dog after Carl Johnson, 15, as Johnson and a friend, Michael Hynes, 16, of Van Nuys, skateboarded Oct. 24 in the 4800 block of Laurel Canyon Boulevard.

When the dog ran up to him and attempted to bite his lower legs, Johnson was forced to jump from his skateboard and into the street, according to Deputy City Atty. KjehlT. Johansen.

The dog never bit Johnson, according to the evidence presented during a three-day trial, but the animal did bite into the skateboard.

When the dog returned to Kuns, Hynes asked Kuns, “Are you crazy?”

Kuns replied with a racial epithet, according to the testimony.

Once Johnson fled the scene, according to the prosecutor, Kuns asked Hynes “in essence, why he wasn’t hanging around with his own kind.”

Kuns was arrested six weeks after the attack after police tracked him using a license plate number that Hynes had obtained.

Deputy Public Defender Virginia Montecino did not present a defense in the case.

Following the trial and sentencing, Judge Robert Wallerstein called Johnson, Hynes and Johnson’s mother into his chambers. “He took some time to reassure them the system does work,” Johansen said.