Among the questions that went unanswered were what had caused the dog to lash out and why it took several hours for the victim’s body to be found, in the area of a nearby creek bed.
“Who knows what happened?” Paterson’s chief animal control officer, John DeCando, said. “A child is dead. And I can’t comprehend that.”
City police released only limited information about the incident, declining to identify either the victim or the dog’s owner.
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| The Paterson, NJ home where the 115-pound bullmastiff dog lived. |
One of the boys was later reported missing. A search was conducted, and his body was found around 11 p.m. in the area of Rossiter Avenue and Hill Street, Rodriguez said. That’s just behind the house on Sherwood where neighbors said the dog lived.
Molly Ann Brook, which runs into the Passaic River, is located next to the intersection. Saturday afternoon, an iron fence along the waterway was cut and rolled back. Several spots of blood had soaked into the snow along the bank of the creek. Purple gloves, typically used by crime scene investigators, were seen discarded on the ground nearby.
Rodriguez said “the timeline” for the incident starts at 4 p.m. Friday.
The exact cause of the boy’s death is not known at this time. An autopsy will be conducted, Rodriguez said. The second boy was bitten on the hand. He was treated at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center and released, according to Rodriguez.
At some point, the dog’s owner was also attacked and bitten on the hand before stabbing the dog “quite a few times,” DeCando said. The dog, described by DeCando as a 115-pound bull mastiff, was “humanely euthanized,” and its remains will be tested for rabies, DeCando said. The owner was also treated for his injuries.
No charges had been filed as of Saturday evening; police said the matter is still under investigation.
The attack occurred in the Hillcrest section of the city, in an area of modest single-family homes. One Sherwood Avenue resident said she saw an injured boy running down the street at roughly 4:30 Friday afternoon. Carmen Baez said she was approached by a boy who was bleeding from his hand.
The boy told Baez he had been bitten by a dog. She went into her house to retrieve a bandage and paper towel for him. The boy wrapped his own hand and then ran down Sherwood Avenue toward Chamberlain Avenue, said Baez, who offered to call 911 but didn't after the boy asked her not to. She did not know his name, which authorities have not released. She added that the boy seemed terrified.
Maria Zacheus, who lives in a second-floor apartment at Sherwood and Crosby avenues, said she awoke around 9 p.m. Friday by the sound of a search party coming through the back yard of her apartment complex, located next to the creek. She opened her window and asked them what they were doing. A boy — believed to be the second victim — told her that he was looking for his friend.
Zacheus used her smartphone to record several video clips of the police presence in her back yard. In one, viewed by a reporter, she recorded a man believed to be the deceased boy’s father. “He was saying, ‘My son, my son, my son.’ He was crying and crying and crying," Zacheus said.
DeCando believes this is the first time in his 37 years working for the city that an animal attack has resulted in a fatality.
DeCando did not believe any complaints had been made in the past about the dog, who neighbors said was named Trigger.
But Marcus Lugo, whose grandmother lives on Sherwood Avenue, said animal control had picked the dog up at least once before when it got loose.
The dog “was friendly in the beginning,” Lugo said, until neighborhood kids started provoking it.
“Two or three years ago, the kids would make the dog run after them,” said Lugo, 24. “The dog was able to hop the fence because it was tall.”
Lugo said the dog had gotten loose two times prior to Friday’s attack.
Other residents said they were fearful of the dog. Rezwana Islam, 17, said she's seen the dog jump on top of a silver car parked behind the fence of the Sherwood Avenue home where it is believed to have lived. “We always walk quickly into the house if he is barking," Islam said.
Reflecting on Friday’s attack, she said, “That could have been any of us.” Zacheus said the dog had tried to attack her and her 6-year-old grandson in the past. “He was trying to jump the fence, because the fence is very low,” said Zacheus, who noted that the dog was bigger than her grandson.
“Monday through Friday, I walk through here to go pick him up from school. I always see the dog. He starts barking. He's very aggressive.” Rather than walk past the house, she would cross the street, she said.
The dog bit a family friend last year but the attack was not reported, residents told The Post.
(NY Daily News - Mar 1, 2014)
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