Dog killed baby, father says

The Knox County Sheriff’s office is investigating the death of a 1-month-old boy following a reported dog attack.

According to dispatchers, paramedics and deputies responded about 6:10 a.m. Wednesday to a 911 call from a home in the 16000 block of Wooster Road (Route 3) about seven miles northeast of Mount Vernon. The homeowner, Teddy Hagans, told the dispatcher that his dog had attacked and mauled his baby boy in his bassinet.

Hagans, 25, at one point was asked by the dispatcher if he needed the dispatcher to walk him through CPR, according to the 911 recording. Hagans declined, telling the dispatcher that the child’s head injuries were too severe.

The infant was pronounced dead at the home. The coroner was called to the home along with the county dog warden’s office, which removed two pit bulls from the residence.

The boy’s mother, Courtney Cole, 23, a certified nursing aide from Fredericktown whom authorities say is not married to Hagans, was not at the Wooster Road home at the time the incident occurred. She later called 911 twice.

The first call, from her mother’s house, was seemingly to confirm what she had been told had happened. The second call a short time later was to advise dispatchers that her mother was driving her to the scene at a high rate of speed and to ask that sheriff’s deputies please be told not to pull them over for speeding.

Knox County Sheriff David Shaffer has released no further information about the death while the investigation continues.

“There is probably more that we don’t know than what we do know right now,” Knox County Prosecutor Chip McConville told The Dispatch.