Police were told about dog before it killed child

POLICE failed to act on concerns about a dog that went on to fatally attack a six-month-old baby, a report has found.

Molly-Mae Wotherspoon died from blood loss after being savaged by the American pitbull named Bruiser at the family home in Daventry in 2014.

Her mother, Claire Riley, and grandmother, Susan Aucott, were both given two-year prison terms over the death at Northampton Crown Court last month.

A report into the tragedy from the Northamptonshire Safeguarding Children Board said Ms Riley (23) took the dog to a vet nine months before the attack.

It said the dog “was so fierce that a vet had earlier refused to examine it for an illness unless it was first fully sedated”.

This information was passed on to the RSPCA, which forwarded the information to police, but the report said officers “failed to carry out further inquiries into that dog, or into who lived in the same household as the dog”.

Northamptonshire Police said it had carried out a “complete overhaul” of its policy within weeks of the tragedy.