After the attack, the dog - a German shepherd named "P.J." - stood over the body of Daryl Sanders, snarling at several siblings as they pleaded for their brother to wake up.
Sanders lived with his mother and sisters in a brown duplex at 2323 Jamestown Avenue in Hampton, Virginia.
Sgt. Jeff Walden, a Hampton police spokesman, said one of the victim's sisters told a 911 operator at 3:43 p.m. that she found her brother dead in the back yard.
Richard Clark, a Hampton physician who examined the body, said he found multiple wounds "all over the body." He guessed the boy had been dead several hours. An autopsy will determine more precisely when the attack occurred and the cause of death.
Louis I. Hicks lives two doors from the Sanders. Hicks, a welder, was returning home from work when he heard two girls trying to rouse a young boy on the damp, cold ground.
Hicks said one of the girls appeared to be about 10 years old. "She was calling, 'D, get up! D, get up! Get up!' " the neighbor said. "D" was Daryl's nickname.
Hicks glanced across the wire fence from his porch and saw the boy on the ground, and a growling German shepherd standing over the body. Hicks said the girls appeared terrified.
Hicks recognized the dog as belonging to the boy's family.
As Hicks crossed into the yard, he saw a neighbor on the opposite side moving toward the dog.
"He was holding a tree limb and was hitting the dog across the back with it," Hicks said.
Hicks said he waited for the dog to move, then raced to the spot and lifted the body.
Hicks said he could see teeth marks in the boy's neck, rip marks on the back of his shirt and noticed a shoe was missing.
His wife, Sharon Hicks, said minutes later the boy's mother pulled her car into the driveway. She said the mother picked up the boy and cradled him in her arms.
After police and emergency workers gathered at the scene, the mother - Annette Sanders (Annette Brown Sanders) - stood on her front porch.
Sanders raised three fingers when asked the age of the dog. She also gave its name: "P.J."
After the body was taken away, two officers from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals snared the dog and locked it in the back of a vehicle.
"He was calm, not aggressive at all," said SPCA officer Ron Chavers.
The German shepherd will be quarantined, Chavers said, "until the court decides his fate."
Police believe the boy might have been attacked shortly after he left his house to board a school bus for Tarrant Elementary School off Aberdeen Road.
It was not immediately known why the boy's body was not discovered earlier in the day.
"The little boy must have gone out to feed the dog or play with him before school," Louis Hicks said.
(Daily Press - Feb 19, 2000)
