Local

Bond set at $5,000 for alleged park attacker

ATLANTA — A man accused of attacking a mother in a local park asked a judge to reduce his $5,000 bond at his first appearance Saturday morning.

Louis Rivera, 54, stood before a magistrate court judge at the Fulton County jail to face battery charges for the incident that happened Monday at the Old Fourth Ward Skate Park.

"I was just wondering if it was possible that I could get a slightly lower bail?" asked Rivera.

"Sir, you are a flight risk. You have previously been charged with bail jumping," the judge replied.

Investigators arrested Rivera after seeing cellphone video of him hitting a woman's hand, knocking her cellphone to the ground as she played with her 3-year-old at the park.

The woman told Channel 2's Amy Napier Viteri that Rivera ordered some of the kids in her group to play elsewhere because his two unleashed dogs were there first.

Records show that Rivera has been involved in similar confrontations in the past.

Viteri spoke to a man who said Rivera punched him in the mouth in August for petting his two dogs.

"Angry, angry old man," Jarred Orr said. "There were two pit bulls tied up outside so I went to pet them because they were very friendly."

Orr said he tried to pet the two dogs outside an East Atlanta restaurant on Flat Shoals Road. He said Rivera came running outside and ordered him not to touch his dogs.

"I'm sorry, I was just petting them. No need to get an attitude about it," Orr recalled saying.

Orr said Rivera replied, "Do you want to see me get an attitude about it?"

Orr said the situation escalated when management kicked Rivera out of the restaurant.

"Then he just sucker punches me right in the eye and runs away," Orr said.

Orr gave Channel 2 Action News photos of his bruised eye and cut face and told Viteri he didn't think someone with Rivera's temper should be walking around.

Police also cited Rivera in 2011 for not having his dogs on a leash when they attacked a woman and her dog in a city park.

At Saturday's hearing for the recent park confrontation, the judge also ordered him to stay away from Old Ward Fourth Ward Skate Park and to keep his dogs on leashes in public at all times.