One minute he was playing and the next, he was fighting to survive.
The family of six-year-old Dylan McNeal says he’s got as many as 600 stitches to his face. He is actually doing surprisingly well given the trauma that he has been through.
7 Action News reporter Malcolm Maddox spoke to Dylan’s father Paul. The owner of the dog was a friend of his, an acquaintance of his, and it was just an accident, a very tragic accident.
Right now young Dylan is inside Royal Oak Beaumont Hospital and he continues to fight.
“You gotta be careful with them. They can snap at any moment," Paul McNeil says about the dog that attacked his son.
When any dog snaps, but especially a pit bull, the results can be life altering.
Pictures of Dylan McNeal from before the attack show happier times, before the dog that belonged to a family friend snapped and mauled his face.
Paul McNeil described the injuries like this, “He ended up breaking his nose, fracturing his eye in two places, fractured his skull and he's got so many wounds that I couldn't even count them.”
Paul and his wife have been at Dylan's side ever since this tragedy occurred Monday afternoon in the back yard of the family's Hazel Park apartment home. Dylan and his sister Lily were playing in the back yard in the company of a dog the children had formed a previous relationship with.
[Sorry to interrupt your reading, but this has got to be one of the most ridiculous phrases I've ever read.... "in the company of a dog the children had formed a previous relationship with". Why not just say that they were left unattended in the backyard with a pit bull that belonged to a family friend?]
There seemed to be no indication that something so vicious could occur but in an instant, that changed.
“He got a hold of him for less than a minute,” says Paul.
As a result, poor little Dylan will never be the same.
Dr. Bassam Gebara says Dylan “has numerous lacerations of the face, numerous fractures of all the facial bones, most of the facial bones around the eye pocket, and some of the air from that part even went all the way around his brain. So this is a fairly serious injury. “
A team of doctors worked six hours to save Dylan. His family has been relying on their faith, and it seems their prayers have been answered.
Dr. Gebara says, “I would expect the patient to do well. There may be a few scars her and there, but he should do well.”
“He has a long road ahead of him, but he is making big steps on that road already,” says Paul McNeal.
As a matter of fact, he is doing so well that there is a chance that he could leave for home Thursday or maybe even Friday.
(WXYZ - Oct 14, 2011)
