Dog Attack: Pit bull mauls 4 year-old boy

ARIZONA -- A 4-year-old boy was severely mauled by a dog Thursday afternoon after he entered a Phoenix neighbor’s yard and attempted to take a bone away from the animal.

The 5-year-old pit-bull ripped skin and surrounding tissue from the boy’s face which caused the child to lose an extensive amount of blood. The boy also suffered an open fracture to the jaw area.
He was initially taken to an urgent care but was quickly transported to a hospital after an emergency medicine physician saw he was missing a part of his face.

The child arrived at Maricopa Medical Center, a level one trauma center, in shock due to the blood loss he had suffered from. He was seen by Dr. Jeffrey P. Salomone, MD, who has seen three other children in the past six weeks who have also been attacked by dogs.

The boy was stabilized and brought to surgery where a plastic surgeon began reconstruction of his face. According to Dr. Salomone, the child may need more reconstructive surgery after doctor’s assess the nerve function of the child’s face based on the boy’s ability to move his facial muscles when he wakes up.

The child is expected to survive the attack but will have permanent scarring on his face.

“The child was doing well this morning and is expecting to survive but he certainly arrived here with critical injuries yesterday,” Dr. Salomone said. “There’s no way the child is ever going to look like the child looked like yesterday morning.”

The boy is expected to remain in the hospital for up to two weeks and will hopefully return to normal activities within a month to six weeks, according to Dr. Salomone.

According to the Center for Disease Control, each year nearly 4.5 million Americans are bitten by dogs and half of them are children. The highest number of those injuries occur to children between the ages of five and nine and children under four commonly suffer injuries to the head and neck.

After the boy was attacked, the owner of the dog turned the dog over to Maricopa County Animal Care and Control. The owner told them they no longer want the pit-bull.

The dog was brought in by an animal control officer and was transported to the west shelter, located at 2300 south 27th Avenue, where the pit-bull will be quarantined for 10 days and out of public view.

After that 10 day period, Animal Care and Control will determine what steps to take from there, according to Melissa Gable, public information officer for Maricopa County Animal Care and Control.

Gable urges parents and adults to watch children when they are around animals to prevent these types of situations.

“It’s important to remind everyone to, just like keep your eyes on kids around water, keeps your eyes on kids around dogs as well,” Gable said.

(AZ Central - Feb 21, 2014)