Left inset: Damon Leonard (Bates County Sheriff’s Office). Right inset: Airen Andula (KCTV/YouTube). Background: The area in Kansas where Airen Andula was allegedly killed (WDAF/YouTube).
A Kansas man is charged with murder after his unleashed dogs — mixed mastiff and pit bull breeds — allegedly mauled a 13-year-old neighbor to death, leading him to pack the boy up and dump his ravaged body “down a large ravine.”
Damon Leonard, 47, was charged with second-degree murder and other charges related to the vicious killing of Airen Andula, a Linn County seventh grader who lived down the street from Leonard and was biking to his buddy’s house, according to The Kansas City Star.
Airen’s family told The Star that the boy was on his way to let his friend’s dogs and chickens out in December 2025 when Leonard’s canines, which were known to run free, attacked him just days before Christmas.
After the boy was mauled to death, Leonard packed up Airen’s body and then hurled it “down a large ravine in a creek bed” around 30 miles away in Missouri, according to an arrest affidavit.
For that, the local father was convicted in Missouri of abandonment of a corpse and sentenced to four years in prison last week. He was charged this week by the Kansas Attorney General’s Office with murder, involuntary manslaughter, interference with law enforcement, criminal desecration by unauthorized control of a dead body, and permitting a dangerous animal to be at large.
“I … could have overlooked, you know, the dog attack,” Jody Andula, Airen’s mother, told The Star in January. “That’s just a freak accident, but I can’t forgive him for what he did trying to hide my kid from us when we were all looking for him. Playing along like he didn’t know where he was at when he did know — that’s what I can’t accept.”
Andula said it was supposed to take Airen just five minutes to ride to his friend’s house to tend to their pets — chickens, a pet rooster and dogs — while his family was away, and then another five minutes to ride back.
Airen was biking on a gravel path when Leonard’s dogs allegedly attacked him.
“I mean, as a parent, you can’t imagine another parent doing [that], let alone watching it, and not helping a child,” said Ashlyn Clough, mother of Airen’s best friend whom Airen was helping out. “I don’t know what was going through his head. It just doesn’t make sense why he didn’t call 911. Maybe he panicked and he was scared. But even if you were panicked and were scared, you could have at least called.”
