MASSACHUSETTS -- A mixed breed dog that attacked a 5-year-old boy in a South End apartment on July 21 is out of quarantine and back with its owner, and the boy's mother said she is furious.
“If my dog did that to someone, I would have put him to sleep,” Maria Lima said.
Lima said her son, Ethan Pereira, spent a week in Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence after the attack by the boxer/Boston terrier and now requires skin grafts and plastic surgery to his forehead.
The attack took place on the same night two American bulldogs attacked and killed a Chihuahua as its owner was walking the dog on Concord Street and just days before an 11-year-old child suffered a pit bull bite to the face at J.C. Auto Repair on Cove Road.
According to the police report of the incident involving Lima's son, the child ran upstairs and opened the door to a second-floor apartment on Jouvette Street while his mother was in conversation with the dog's owner, Nono Laranjeira, at the street-level door.
The dog bit the child on the head when he entered the apartment, causing a deep laceration to the skull and cuts to his nose and cheeks, the report stated.
Lima, who lives on Crapo Street, said she was friendly with Laranjeira and his girlfriend, Kimberley Medeiros, and had come to visit them that Saturday evening, bringing some cake. “But I never saw the dog before,” Lima said. “They kept it in a room because it attacked someone before.”
Laranjeira, who has owned the dog for seven years, said he regretted the incident but felt the responsibility was not all his. “The door was closed and the dog was on its own territory,” he said. Laranjeira confirmed that he usually keeps the dog in a room when guests arrive.
“But my girlfriend was not feeling well that night. So I was telling them that it wasn't a good time to call,” he said. The boy initially ran up the stairs and was called back. But he ran up a second time and opened the door, triggering the attack, according to Laranjeira.
His dog once lunged at a teenager while on a leash, he said, after it had been provoked with a stick.
The male dog has now been classified as dangerous under the city's ordinance and must be neutered within 30 days and implanted with a microchip to permanently identify it, according to Manny Maciel, the city's animal control director.
“The dog served its quarantine in Fall River. The owner paid and it's now back in the city,” he confirmed. If taken out of its home, it must be muzzled at all times while on public streets, he said.
Laranjeira's dog did not have a current license at the time of the attack and the owner has paid the $25 fine. “It was licensed in 2010, I believe,” Maciel said. In addition, there is a $50 surcharge for licensing dogs classified as dangerous, he said.
Lima, who contacted The Standard-Times on Wednesday about the incident, called the newspaper later in the day to say on the advice of a lawyer she did not want to be quoted.
(South Coast Today - August 2, 2012)
