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Youngstown Boy, 6, Mauled by Family Pit Bull

Breaks Out of Pen to Attack
Youngstown, OH - Neighbors used a rake to beat away a family pit bull that mauled a 6-year-old boy this weekend. Wanda Greer, a neighbor and witness to the attack, said she had never seen anything like it in her life. Greer identified the child as Paul Richardson Jr. She said she heard his mother’s screams and then saw the dog "rolling the baby like a tumbleweed."

"I heard the bones crush on his left arm," she said. The dog bit the boy’s face and neck, ripped his lip and "bent his arm back like paper."

The child’s condition was unavailable Sunday because he was still in the emergency room. But he was reportedly discharged on Monday. An understanding of his injuries is still unclear. According to Greer, the dog, which belongs to the boy’s family, somehow got out of the backyard pen. She described the dog as friendly (prior the attack).

The call to police initially listed the victim as a nonbreather. Three officers were on the scene within minutes, as was an ambulance. Greer said there was a lot of blood and that the boy "was fading in and out." The boy’s mother was trying to free her son from the pit bull’s jaws, but the dog kept tearing at the child’s flesh. Greer's husband grabbed a rake and beat the dog.

The neighborhood kids had been outside all day, Greer said, playing and riding bikes. She described Paul as very little, adding she heard no sounds from him during the attack, only his mother’s screams. Police said the dog warden would handle the investigation. DogsBite.org hopes so. In the city of Youngstown, Ohio, there is a pit bull ban.