Pit bull mauls boy, 6, in city

The boy was ‘fading in and out,’ a neighbor said.

STAFF REPORT

YOUNGSTOWN — Neighbors used a rake to beat away a pit bull that mauled a 6-year-old Republic Avenue boy.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” said Wanda Greer, still trembling as she watched a Mahoning County dog warden use a snare to capture a tan pit bull next door around 8:20 p.m. Sunday.

“I heard his mother’s screams and then saw the dog rolling the baby like a tumbleweed. I heard the bones crush on his left arm.”

Greer identified the child as Paul Richardson Jr., 1416 Republic. She said the dog bit the boy’s face and neck, ripped his lip and “bent his arm back like paper.”

The child’s condition at St. Elizabeth Health Center was unavailable Sunday night because he was still in the emergency room.

The dog, which belongs to the boy’s family, somehow got out of the backyard pen, Greer said. A black pit bull, described as friendly, had been in the house.

The call to police, around 8 p.m., initially listed the victim as a nonbreather. Three officers were on the scene within minutes, as was an ambulance.

Greer said there was a lot of blood and showed great concern for the little boy’s condition. “He was fading in and out,” she said.

Greer said the boy’s mother was trying to free her son from the pit bull’s jaws, but the dog kept tearing at the child’s flesh as they rolled in the yard. Greer’s husband grabbed a rake to beat the dog away while the boy’s mother tried to get the dog’s teeth off her son.

“He had a lock on the baby,” Greer said. “His father’s out of town, I talked to him, told him they took the dog. He said he didn’t care, just wanted to know how his son was doing.”

Tammy Colbert, who lives a few doors down from where the attack took place, said neighbors had to beat the dog so that the ambulance crew could take the boy. She said the child’s mother went along in the ambulance.

Greer said Paul and other neighborhood kids had been outside all day, playing and riding bikes. She described Paul as very little, adding she heard no sounds from him during the attack, only his mother’s screams.

Police said the dog warden would handle the investigation.