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Girl, 5, suffers serious facial injuries in attack by recently adopted dog
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
A dog will be euthanized after it bit a 5-year-old Logan Avenue girl in the face Thursday.
She underwent plastic surgery at Akron Children’s Hospital and returned home at 4:30 a.m. Friday, her father told The Vindicator.
A Warren police report says the girl was feeding the dog french fries at the kitchen table and then got down from the table to grab one of the pit-bull mix’s toys when the dog bit her at 4:24 p.m.
The family adopted the dog Wednesday from the Trumbull County Dog Pound on Anderson Avenue in Howland. A deputy dog warden came to the house and took it back after the attack, police said.
Michelle Goss, county dog warden, said the dog’s name is Lucian, and he is an American Bulldog mix weighing about 90 pounds. The pound did not consider him dangerous.
The previous family that had Lucian had children and brought him back “because he is a big dog,” she said. Lucian tended to “guard” the man in the family. He tried to keep the children, wife and others away from the man, she said.
But he never bit or hurt anyone.
“We have no idea what went wrong. We would never let a dangerous dog go out into the public. We feel horrible,” Goss said.
Lucian will be euthanized in 10 days, she said.
The police report mentioned a deputy dog warden found a reference to Lucian on an internet page suggesting the dog might not be best around small children.
Goss said the site is run by a volunteer who takes pictures of the dogs and posts them.
“Lucian would do best in a home without cats and small children as he doesn’t know his size or strength,” Goss said, reading from the page. “The big goof. This sweet dude is a charmer destined to make you smile.”
The girl’s father said the pound led him to believe the dog was safe, but told The Vindicator, “I don’t understand how they would adopt this dog out to us. They had to have known something. How are you going to give people a dog like that that would attack a 5-year-old girl?”
He said the family “thought we were doing a good deed to rescue the dog from the Trumbull County Dog Pound, and they told us on the paperwork he was great with everyone. The next day, he just mauled her.”