“He was already gone as soon as we got there. No one knew what to do — probably 15 people just watching it happen ... just screaming,” said David Swiniarski, 22, whose roommate called 911.
The boy lived on Clare Street, just a few doors up from where he was killed inside a neighbor’s fenced-in yard.
A woman and a young girl entered the enclosure yesterday to place a vase of yellow sunflowers next to a large blood stain and a piece of wood in the center of the driveway, several feet from where police found the boy’s remains in a bed of leaves next to a Patriots gas grill.
“I feel like if someone got in there, they were next,” Swiniarski said. “There was nothing anyone could do. Two 100-, 120-pound pit bulls ... It was actually horrific to watch.”
A man who answered the phone at the address where the dogs lived told the Herald he was “not at liberty to discuss the matter.”
The boy’s family could not be reached at their home; however, witnesses identified his mother as a woman wailing, “Oh, my baby!” on disturbing video one neighbor shot of the attack. The child’s name had not been released as of last night.
Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan and Lowell police Superintendent William Taylor said in a joint statement Saturday the child was already dead when police arrived at about 6 p.m.
“I’d see him riding his bike up and down the street. He was just a little boy who loved to be free, always smiling, always laughing,” said Giovanni Miranda, 28, who has an 8-year-old daughter.
The dogs, he said, “barked a lot. They would bark every time someone walked by.”
Roger Rodriguez, 56, said the young dogs were a brother and sister. The male, who escaped and was shot dead by police, was named Brighton, he said. The second pit bull was in the city’s custody. The owners, Rodriguez said, are an Iraq war veteran, for whom the dogs provided emotional support, and his girlfriend.
“They’re good people,” he said.
Remon said the dogs were well-cared for. “We never had a problem with those dogs,” she said. “Never.”
Earlier:
