NJ boy, 3, mauled to death by family dog after falling out of window
"The dogs were bad, the dogs, everybody was scared of the dogs."
A New Jersey family has suffered a devastating tragedy after a three-year-old boy fell from a window at his home and was then mauled by dogs in the backyard.
The Elizabeth Police Department said the unnamed boy fell through the window screen of the South 5th Street Elizabeth home on Wednesday evening. He was then attacked by the family’s dogs that were in the fenced yard.
The child suffered severe injuries and was rushed to the Trinitas Regional Medical Center, where he died from his injuries, PEOPLE reports.
“The dogs were bad, the dogs, everybody was scared of the dogs. As soon as the baby fell, the dogs attack him,” said neighbor Maria Rocha. “Killed him, right then and there. Oh man, I didn’t sleep all night. My heart is broken. I didn’t sleep all night. I cannot believe this happened.”
Elizabeth health officials removed the dogs from the home, and the city is looking to euthanize the animals. A local animal control group reportedly took the dogs to another location.
“The dogs are currently quarantined, and the city is looking to have them euthanized. We have to wait until the investigation is complete,” a spokesperson for the City of Elizabeth told PIX11 News.
Prosecutors said no criminal charges have been filed as the investigation is ongoing. The child’s death comes three months after a neighbor’s pit bulls attacked 3-year-old Aziz Ahmed in New Jersey in March.
The dogs reportedly dug under a fence and into the property of the boy’s family home, where he was in the backyard with his siblings and mother at the time of the fatal mauling, Yahoo reported.
Last month, 4-year-old Elayah Brown was mauled by the family dog in the backyard of her Fort Worth-area home, theGrio reported. Brown suffered life-threatening injuries and was rushed to Cook Children’s Medical Center, where she died. Fort Worth Animal Care and Control reportedly took custody of the mixed breed and the dog was euthanized.
An earlier report also noted that a Detroit boy was hailed a hero for protecting his younger siblings from two pit bulls. Unfortunately, 12-year-old Deacon Ashmore was also attacked and suffered severe injuries.
“He just kept saying, ‘I know Kingston wouldn’t have survived if the dogs would have attacked him. For him, it wasn’t a second thought, that’s the kind of big brother he is,” Deacon’s mother, Elisabeth Ashmore told the Detroit Free Press.
Deacon Ashmore, who was born in Ethiopia and adopted by the Detroit family, did not have any broken bones but was taken to the hospital to have the tendons, ligaments, and muscles in his legs treated via surgery, according to the Detroit Free Press. The dogs injured the boy so badly it looked like “guts were coming out of his leg,” according to one of his little sisters.
theGrio’s Sytonia Reid’s contributed to this report.
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