WALDORF, MD – A 5-year-old girl is recovering from some horrendous injuries she received after being attacked by two dogs in her backyard.
Police said the 5-year-old was at the home with her mother’s boyfriend when she wandered into the backyard where three dogs, an English bulldog and two Presa Canarios, were being kept in a kennel. The dog’s were not owned by the family, according to reports.
“We’re hearing that the dogs may have just been dropped off at the house to be watched after by the homeowners, so we’re still trying to verify that,” said Diane Richardson of the Charles County Sheriff’s Office.
It’s not clear how or why two of the dogs were not in their kennel, but the English Bulldog and one of the Pres Canarios viciously attacked the girl for reasons unknown.
“It’s not clear if she let the dogs out of the kennel,” says Diane Richardson, spokesperson for the Charles County Sheriff’s Department. “It’s not clear if they were even in the kennel… at this point there are no obvious signs of neglect or anything like that.”
When the boyfriend found Savanna, she was in the fetal position, unconscious, with the two dogs near her body. Savanna’s ears had been ripped off, along with her clothes, and she had large bite wounds on her torso and neck.
Savanna was taken to Children’s National Medical Center with life-threatening injuries. Her condition has since been upgraded from critical to stable condition, her family stating they are anticipating an extended recovery.
The English Bulldog and the Presa Canarios involved in the attack were euthanized. A next door neighbor said his kids were at home at the time of the attack.
“They called me,” he said. “They heard [the dogs] just getting loud…. Sounded like they were fighting over there…. But they didn’t go over there because they know what type of dogs they are.”
Authorities do not plan on filing any criminal charges at this time, but ABC7 is reporting the dogs have been a problem before. They say in recent months, a family member called Animal Control to remove as many as a dozen big dogs. However, the dog’s owner got rid of them before they were seized.
