Connecticut: Pit bull put down after mauling Enfield boy

CONNECTICUT -- The community is rallying around an 11-year-old boy who suffered extensive facial injuries after being mauled by a pit bull at a neighbor’s home on Tuesday.

The boy’s mother, Amber Bruno, posted two photos of her son, Joshua, on the Enfield CT Open Forum Facebook page showing his badly damaged face — he suffered deep cuts to his nose, mouth, and cheek — for which he needed 43 stitches.

In a message Bruno posted on the forum she urged parents to always watch their children around dogs. She also defended the dog’s owners and pit bulls as a breed, saying, “there are a lot of sweet pit bulls out there” and that what happened “was nothing the current owners did. So don’t bash on them please.”

Please...

The Facebook post showing the photos garnered 300 comments as of this morning, many of them offering her and her son prayers and well wishes, and offering to send the boy cards to cheer him up as he recovers.

The creator of the forum, Kevin Kibbe, told Bruno in a post that “the forum will do anything and everything it can to help you.”

He also called Bruno a “kind and caring person,” and encouraged the community to send cards to show Joshua that people were thinking of him.

Bruno created a GoFundMe page to help with medical bills and the cost of future plastic surgery for Joshua. The goal is to raise at least $10,000, and as of this morning it had raised $80. The page can be accessed at https://www.gofundme.com/w3n3rfws

Why don't the pit bull owners pay his medical bills? Why don't they sell their lawn mower or their PSP to help pay for the bills? Why don't pit bull rescue groups raise the money??

On the GoFundMe page, Bruno wrote that her son will need a lot of plastic surgery and that he has a long road of recovery ahead of him.

"This picture is a few years old but it's the best one
 with that smile." - Joshua's mom

She said he can’t eat anything that can’t fit in the size of a straw and that he drinks with the straw.

On the Facebook page, Bruno responded multiple times to comments about what happened, at one point saying that if anything positive could come out of it, she would take advantage of it. She called her son a “fighter” and said she would “make sure he is a handsome, happy man in time.”

According to Police Chief Carl Sferrazza, officers did not respond to the scene until after the boy had already been brought to the hospital. He said that the dog’s owners are not facing any charges.
Sferrazza could not confirm whether the dog had been euthanized, but Bruno said that it had in a post on the forum.

(Journal Inquirer - Feb 4, 2016)