An eight-year-old boy riding a bicycle with his friend was mauled to death by two loose dogs he tried to pet in his neighborhood.
Michael Millett stopped to interact with the dogs in the Berry’s Ridge area of Deland, Florida, on Monday. As he approached the dogs a second time, they turned aggressive, and his mother tried to fight them off unsuccessfully.
‘She went out there and had to kick the dog, and punch the dog… and you know, protect her son… but unfortunately, it… she wasn’t able to,’ Michael’s great aunt Jackie Hart told Fox 35.
One 911 caller asked dispatchers if she would face consequences if she shot the animals.
‘They’ve pinned him down on the ground, and now they’re like biting him, but he’s not moving, and he’s not responding,’ said the caller.
Michael suffered 12 bite wounds and died of his injuries.
‘Our family is devastated with the loss of Michael,’ wrote Hart in a GoFundMe page she set up for his funeral and other expenses.
‘He was incredibly smart, funny, caring, loving, and so adventurous. Michael’s contagious laugh and light will be missed tremendously.’
Michael’s mother said they have resided in the neighborhood in Volusia County for six years and had never before seen the two dogs.
However, neighbors said they had encountered them before.
‘As soon as you drive in the driveway, you’d start hearing the dogs, and they’d be going crazy,’ a resident, Frank Tuttle, told Fox 35.
He added that one of the dogs had killed a neighbor’s chickens.
‘I didn’t know whether I had to carry a weapon or do whatever to not get attacked,’ Tuttle said.
The dogs have been captured and an investigation on the attack is ongoing.
Officials said the two dogs are owned by a 31-year-old woman with a lengthy criminal history mostly linked to drugs. She was not immediately charged.
‘We will do everything humanely possible to hold the owner of these dogs responsible, and we’re going to do everything possible to ensure that these animals are destroyed,’ Volusia County Sheriff Michael Chitwood said during a press conference on Tuesday.
Michael is survived by his parents and two older siblings.
The GoFundMe page had raised more than $56,000 as of Wednesday afternoon.
Michael was killed more than four years after a 23-month-old boy was mauled to death by a neighbor’s pit bull in Quinlan, Texas.
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