Girl aged two was mauled by ‘American bully’ dogs
A TODDLER playing in the garden suffered devastating injuries when a pack of dogs escaped through a hole in a fence and attacked her.
Neighbours told how two-year-old Ella McKevitt’s great aunt screamed ‘the dog’s got the baby!’ as she fought off the animals.
The dogs were part of a group of 11 which were said to be being bred for sale at the house next door.
The little girl was taken to hospital by air ambulance and was last night recovering from surgery following Sunday’s incident as her parents waited to learn the extent of her injuries.
The attack happened in Britain’s socalled ‘dog-attack capital’, Merseyside, where there have been at least four fatalities in the past ten years.
It comes just over a month after armed police shot two out-of-control pitbull-type dogs when a woman and a man were bitten in Bolton.
Police said the dogs which attacked the toddler were a breed known as American bully dogs, which can be legally owned in this country despite being bred from banned American pitbull terriers.
The child was playing with her cousins, aged four and six, outside the home of their 57-year- old aunt in Toxteth,
‘They’re in a terrible state’
Liverpool on Sunday afternoon, when the dogs escaped from the house nextdoor into the garden.
Police arrested a 35-year- old man while two of the dogs were destroyed.
A number of rusting cages were yesterday visible in the garden of the neighbouring house, which is home to a couple and their three children.
Neighbours described the dogs as ‘XXL-American bulldogs’ which were being bred for sale.
Ella’s parents, mother Laurie Robinson and father Dean McKevitt, were at her bedside at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital awaiting her recovery from surgery.
‘They’re in a terrible state, they’re just waiting for her to come round,’ a relative said yesterday.
‘It’s such a shock, Ella was just playing in the garden with her cousins when these enormous dogs appeared ... She’s tiny, she didn’t stand a chance. She could so easily have died.’
Police said that based on an initial assessment the breed involved was an American bully dog and therefore legal to own.
Merseyside Police superintendent Mark Wiggins said the attack could have been even more serious but for the intervention of the girl’s aunt, who was also injured in the attack.
‘We know one, if not more, of these dogs was involved in the attack but we need to establish what went on,’ he said, and appealed to the public to report worries about dogs to the police.
Merseyside has experienced the country’s highest proportion of hospital admissions blamed on dog attacks for the past three years.
Cases include four-year- old John-Paul Massey, who was mauled to death by a family pet at his grandmother’s home in Wavertree, Liverpool, in 2009. Other victims in the area include Clifford Clarke, 79, who was savaged in 2013 by a neighbour’s Presa Canario that burst into his back garden, and 43-yearold Louise Caygill, who was killed by her own Staffordshire bull terrier in 2014. And in December five-year- old Millie Purcell suffered horrific injuries when she was attacked by an eight- stone American bulldog that her grandmother was looking after in the Norris Green area of the city.
Joan Purcell, 69, was later given a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to being responsible for a dog dangerously out of control causing injury.
Following criticism of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 – which outlaws four specific breeds, including pitbulls – the law was amended to impose tougher sentences on owners whose pets cause fatalities and to encompass attacks which take place on private property.
Last night Andrew McGowan, of Toxteth, was charged with being responsible for four dogs which, while dangerously out of control, injured a two-year-old girl and 57-year-old woman. He will appear in court today.