Hernandez said she felt around in the dark in the nearby bassinet, but couldn’t find Mya Maria Maeda.
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| This lady is identified as Sylvia Rueda, who I'm guessing is possibly the grandmother. She says the Hernandez family dog wasn't mean. |
She could feel the family dog, Rocky, near the couch, moved her fingers across and realized her baby’s head was in the dog’s mouth, she said.
Screaming for her mother, she wrenched the Pit bull - Mastiff’s jaws apart, cradled her baby and rushed to the hospital, Hernandez said.
The infant died at 9:20 a.m. Monday of head trauma from the attack, according to preliminary autopsy results. Hernandez said the baby also had broken ribs.
“I don’t know how he got her,” she said. “She didn’t even cry. I would have heard her if she cried.”
Mya was Hernandez’s first child, she said.
“She was a happy little baby,” the 20-year-old said. “She used to always get up at 3 a.m., and we’d play for a little while because she didn’t want to go back to sleep. She would close her eyes really tight, and when you’d look at her, she’d give a little smirk. She was always smiling.”
Officers were dispatched to a local hospital about 3:20 a.m. Monday after hearing reports that the family dog bit Mya. Crimes Against Persons Unit and Animal Control detectives began the investigation and turned it over to the Special Crimes Unit because of the injuries, police said.
Police could not be reached for further comment.
The incident rattled the family and neighbors.
“I was shocked that the dog did that,” neighbor Sylvia Rueda said. “He never did anything. He wasn’t a vicious dog at all.”
Rueda said the dog was old, nearly blind and inactive.
Hernandez said the family raised the 9-year-old dog since he was a puppy. He was house-trained, she said.
She said the 130-pound dog was never aggressive, even when her mother raised her 6-year-old brother.
“He used to ride (Rocky’s) back like he was a horse,” she said. “He would pull (Rocky’s) ears, and he was mean to (Rocky). But (Rocky) just sat and ignored him because he knew better.”
[Oh yes... the "he loves kids! the kids climb on him like a pony!" story]
Child Protective Services authorities are conducting a routine investigation on Maeda’s death, regional spokesman Paul Zimmerman said. The agency has no history of investigations with the family, he said.
All child deaths are examined, he said.
“We are investigating to see if abuse or neglect was related to this death,” Zimmerman said. “We are looking to see if the dog had a history of aggressive behavior toward people, which might indicate that neglect contributed to this death or if this was a terrible accident.”
Animal Control Assistant Director Shannon Barlow said the dog, which had no prior history of aggression, was euthanized Monday.
She said the dog did not have any infections. He did have callouses on his elbows like he laid around a lot, she said.
Barlow said while biting is not uncommon, fatalities from bites are unusual.
Typically, when parents bring home a newborn, a dog may become jealous of the infant or may think the infant is a toy, she said.
Hernandez said she thinks the dog’s actions were spurred by jealousy.
The dog used to sleep under the bassinet before Mya got there, she said. When family members came in the house, they would hug Rocky and show him love, she said.
“When the baby got here, it stopped a little,” Hernandez said. “I let him smell her so he wouldn’t be agitated, and I would let him lay near us when I fed her.”
She said she once left Mya to play on the kitchen floor while she prepared her food. Rocky just laid down next to her, she said.
The family is currently waiting for Mya’s body to return from Lubbock to have the funeral services.
“For 11 days, I was a great mom,” Hernandez said. “I never intended for this to happen. I would rather have my baby here than anything.”
[why was she searching in the dark at the empty bassinet? Do they not have electricity?? Why was the bassinet in the living room where there was no way to shut a door to keep the dog away from the baby?!?]
Statistics show pit pull bites number three times higher than any other breed in Amarillo.
(Amarillo Globe News - October 4, 2011)
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