New York: Dog Fatally Shot by Police After Attacking 9-Year-Old Girl, NYPD Says

NEW YORK -- A savage pit bull attacked a 9-year-old girl and her mother in East Harlem on Friday — hours after another dog bit a toddler in Queens, cops said.

In the second episode, the girl and her mom were hospitalized with bites to their arms and stomachs after an escaped dog lunged at them outside a building in the Thomas Jefferson Houses, a city housing project on E. 115th St. and Second Ave., police said.

The pit bull broke free from its owner at 5:30 p.m, cops said.

The Thomas Jefferson Houses in East Harlem. (Photo: Jan Ransom)

Two nearby police officers responded to the attack. One eventually shot the pit bull three times — killing the dog — after the raging beast sunk its teeth into his arm, a police source said.

The mother and daughter were taken to Harlem Hospital with serious bite wounds, police said, adding their injuries were not life-threatening.

Around 1:30 p.m., a pit bull belonging to a panhandler bit a 3-year-old girl in the face outside the Queens Center Mall in Elmhurst, according to ABC Channel 7 news.

Little Mayerly Moreno told the station she got 17 stitches after the random attack.

Mayerly Moreno, 3, was attacked by a pit bull owned
by a panhandler outside Queens Center Mall in Elmhurst,
Queens, on July 1, 2016. (Photo: ABC 7 Eyewitness News)

In East Harlem, a neighbor said a witness who tried to stop the attack told her the dog dragged the helpless little girl back and forth in its mouth.

“He was telling us it was tossing her around,” Sabrina Luyando told the Daily News. “It’s a pit bull, so once they bite they don’t let go for nothing.”

An inconsolable woman believed to be the child’s grandmother cried out as her relatives were taken away in an ambulance, Luyando said.

“The grandma was on the floor screaming because she thought the dog killed her granddaughter,” she said. “It bit her on her ribs, her arms. It was bad. It was really bad. I hope the little girl is OK.”

The pit bull also bit a Good Samaritan — who Luyando said was a NYCHA worker — who tried to intervene and distract the dog from its prey, police said.

The bitten police officer was treated at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital for an injury to his arm.

The dog’s owner was not immediately charged with a crime.

Luyando said that after the NYCHA worker stepped in to try and help, another Good Samaritan hit the dog with a stick to and then it came after him.

"The guy who grabbed the stick jumped over a fence with the dog after him," she said. "He was telling the cops to shoot the dog. Then they let three (shots) go. They had to shoot it."

Luyando said why the dog attacked is a mystery.

"I don't know if it got angry or what," she said. "If that dog was aggressive, there's no reason for him to be outside. They shouldn't have dogs like that.

"I thought they didn't let dogs like that in housing."

(NY Daily News - July 1, 2016)