Skylar Headrick, 11-years old, was mauled to death by two family Neapolitan mastiffs.
Killed by Large Mastiffs
Crandall, GA - Two family dogs killed an 11-year old girl over the weekend, the Murray County Sheriff's Office said. The fatal attack occurred on May 30 after 11:00 pm at the family's home on Dunn Road West. A police report obtained by WTVC states the girl's sister returned from work and went down to the basement, where she discovered her younger sister on the floor lifeless. She ran and told her father, who told police that he saw blood on the fur of both of his Neapolitan mastiffs.
The Murray County Deputy Coroner said the preliminary cause of death is blunt and sharp force trauma. The manner of death was an accident.
The father told investigators he believed the dogs attacked her, but said they had "never been aggressive to humans before;" they had only been aggressive to each other. The father's social media page shows one of the Neapolitans at 10-weeks old in February 2019 and possibly a different one, named "Tank," in 2018. He also has a video of one of the Neapolitans from a year ago that shows the adult dog running in slow motion. The family owns two St. Bernards too.1
The last time the father had seen his daughter was about 11:00 pm, when she came upstairs to get a bandage for her heel after one of the dogs had scratched her. She returned to the basement afterward, where both Neapolitans were. She was never seen alive again. Northwest Elementary School identified her as one of their students, Skylar Headrick. The child's family has set up a GoFundMe. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) is also assisting in the investigation.
Skylar's mother, Cecelia Dowis Headrick, posted to Facebook on May 31, "Last night at 1:45 am my sweet beautiful and smart 11-year old baby girl was killed by her own Neapolitan mastiff. Her older sister found her, but it was too late. I am a mother of three beautiful daughters. And I am devastated. I want her back in my arms safe at home with me. I want to hold her and never let her go." She added, "This pain is unreal." The post only indicated one Neapolitan mastiff, not two.
Neapolitan mastiffs
The Neapolitan mastiff is a large heavy-boned mastiff. It's ancient ancestor, the Molossus (molosser), was a war dog used to fight other animals, including lions and tigers, as well as people, during times of war. They were known as "war dogs, gladiators, and guardians." Many dangerous dog breeds descended from the molosser, including: pit bull terriers, rottweilers, American bulldogs, South African boerboels, cane corsos, dogo Argentinos, and more.
The Neapolitan mastiff is grouped within our annual and combined year dog bite fatality statistics under the mastiff/bullmastiff category. During the 15-year period of 2005 to 2019, the combination of large molosser breeds -- pit bull terriers, rottweilers, and mastiff-type guard dogs and war dogs, specifically, the types used to create "baiting" bull breeds and fighting breeds -- contributed to 84% of all U.S. dog bite fatalities. From inherited function to conformation, no one should be surprised.
Recent Photographs
The obituary for Skylar Headrick states that one of her sisters is named Kirsten. Recently, a "Kirsten H" posted photographs of one St. Bernard and two Neapolitan mastiffs to KingPet.com, a pet contest website. The same photograph of "Nessie" the St. Bernard is also seen on the father's Facebook page. Gracie and Tank appear to be the family's two Neapolitan mastiffs as adults. We previously identified that "Tank" was the name of one of the family's two Neapolitan mastiffs.
Late Wednesday, we confirmed that Skylar's father linked to this same pet contest with "Tank."
Gracie and Tank, recently posted to a contest on KingPet, appear to be the family's two Neos.
Four days after her death, Skylar's father posted these images as his Facebook cover and profile pictures, showing his daughter with the dog that killed her. This is a form of mental illness.
Related articles:
05/12/20: 2020 Dog Bite Fatality: Doctor Killed by Suspected Roaming Dogs in Lyons, Georgia
03/10/20: 2020 Dog Bite Fatality: Suspected Fatal Pit Bull Mauling in Crawford County, Georgia
12/27/19: 2019 Dog Bite Fatality: Woman Dies After Vicious Dog Attack in Dacula, Georgia
Law enforcement departments across the United States should release consistent "baseline" information to the media and the public after each fatal dog mauling, including these items.
Another Georgia death. How horrible, my heart goes out to this beautiful girl’s family
A family who can afford for a very large expensive dogs can afford to pay for the funeral one of their own. Go fund me is getting out of hand. I see this family is enriching themselves with go fund me. Despite being well over the $10,000 goal, they keep it open to get more money. I was disgusted that they didn’t evening acknowledge their culpability in this beautiful girl’s death.
Why nobody could hear the screamimg i would imagine were loud enough to hear, if everyone was home? This doesn’t make sense to me
There was no screaming the dog pushed her down and she hit her head on the concrete floor
I had heard they were put down.
Good riddance to them!
I sort of agree with Christy’s point about funerals for these kinds of preventable accidents. I’d rather see the money donated to Dogs Bite or similar group working to prevent these kinds of accidents. On the other hand, this family doesn’t appear to have been dangerous dog advocates, but probably a family taken in the lie that “all dogs are good.” And I really feel for the siblings, having several children myself, I know they would be devastated if anything happened to any of the others. Hopefully the funeral and memorial/gravestone will help bring a small bit of comfort to them.
Cannot people understand these kinds of dogs are too big and too powerful for children. I assume the dogs got into a fight, and she got into the middle of the fight. When two large dogs are fighting in a confined area with a person present, that person may not be able to escape.
That’s what I thought too. If the two dogs got into a serious fight, the girl could have gotten in the middle of it. Two huge dogs like this in fighting mode are a serious danger to anyone around them.
This is just a horrible situation, and shows that seriously dog aggressive dogs can be dangerous to people. Some dog people (especially fighting dog advocates) like to separate dog and human aggression and act like dog-aggressive dogs are safe with people. But if an aggressive dog gets ramped up and violent with another dog, a human in the way can be attacked and even killed. This poor family learned that in the worst way possible.
“never been aggressive to humans before;”. That is one of only two classifications of dangerous canines. The other classification is: Someone knew it to have shown aggression before. The end result is the same: Through extreme pain and suffering, earthly life is over, due to dangerous canines, that were either always friendly, or known to have shown aggression. Just because a dangerous canine has always appeared to be friendly to all people at all times, does not mean that it can’t suddenly cause extreme suffering and/or death. What are people thinking? Projection is a powerful psychological defense mechanism: [i]MY[/i] dog would never harm anyone! The responsible person was not cognitively challenged. The responsible person did not suffer from paucity of information. The responsible person chose to place all people in the vicinity at risk of grave threat. The only thing that the responsible person suffered lack of was Love for self and others. If he was in Love, he would not have chosen a dangerous wild canine as a pet animal.
I am very confused by this. It sounds like the killing dog was so agressive it had to be kept in a basement, but becuase it was only shown to be dog aggressive and not human agressive they didn’t feel the need to do anything more than leave it in the basement away from the other dogs? But why on earth not have the aggressive one put down for the safety of every living being in the house?
I can’t belive people are still allowing huge fighting and guard breeds around their young children. I’m so sad that this beautiful little girl is gone and that it was her sister who was the one who found her. May she rest in peace.
Why not? Because you can breed them. Neos are very expensive and these two were just getting to the age for breeding. When the household starts to look likes Noah’s Ark (2 of each breed one male and one female) that is likely where things are headed.
Can’t believe that people are still allowing huge fighting and guard breeds around young children?
Well, I’m writing this after losing a good night’s sleep. Why? Because of the barking of the two HUGE pit bulls across the street.
They and their owners just began occupying a rental house. Moved in over the weekend.
And, no, I have no plans to go over there to welcome them to the neighborhood and politely ask them to please do something about the barking. Why not? Read the just-posted story about the entitled scofflaw dog owner in NYC. Plenty of clues in that story.
Oh, I might add that the lady of the house is very pregnant. And she already has two small children. In a house with two HUGE pit bulls.
Methinks this family’s story won’t end well.
My next door neighbors bought an extremely expensive, massive molosser dog. Not the breed in this story, but a very close cousin. They do not have control over it. Its forays into the outdoors are always accompanied by barking and yelling.
We can’t even go outside without checking to see if the coast is clear. And yes there are small children involved as well.
June 5 update: I just saw the chronological adult male from across the street. He was attempting to walk both pit bulls on one leash that he attached to a thick belt around his waist.
He didn’t get very far.
I also noticed that he had tucked a pistol into his waistband. Self defense against his own dogs? I suspect so.
I also noticed that one of the pit bulls is a female that appears to have had puppies.
I’m calling this a pit bull breeding operation.
People who own mollaser have a lion-tamer complex or a neurotic need to “ensure their family’s safety,” which is just an excuse to engage in a dick-swaggering contest and scare the shit out of their neighbors and passers-by. In any event, they’re too immature to raise a child. I am very, very sorry this kid was the victim If it was in the basement, that meant they were afraid of it.
Does anyone know if these people were breeding their dogs or intended to breed them? It really has no bearing on the child’s death but could be interesting. By their names, I assume the Neos were opposite sexes.
Power breeds and children are not a good mix. People never learn.
Which is why I’m so worried about the new neighbors I described up-thread. ^^^
Especially the children and the baby that is about to arrive. They didn’t consent to be placed in so much danger.
Well I’m pretty sure I found their breeding site on Facebook. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there are at least two redheaded girls in the photos. The word Grace” is part of the operation which is also one of the dog’s names and it is in the south. Colleen, Look into Southern Grace Gentle Giants on Facebook
Female was a gift. And the male was purchased.
It’s not something either parent ever thought would happen or they wouldn’t have been in that situation I am sure. Mistakes were made and it had a tragic result. But they are not bad people with bad intentions.
They thought that it could possibly happen, but they Projected, because they were “our” dogs. [i]MY[/i] dog would never harm anyone! What were they thinking? Due to self delusion borne of ego, they thought that they had a cognitive or emotional or spiritual connection with their dangerous canines. Suddenly they find out they did not have any such connection or power with/over their dangerous canines. The responsible person was not cognitively challenged. The responsible person did not suffer from paucity of information. The responsible person did not fail to think of all possible outcomes. The responsible person chose to place all people in the vicinity at risk of grave threat. Good People do not hand their child a hyena or a jackal or a dangerous canine when they ask for a pet animal.
Haven’t there been enough children killed? “I keep hearing the same tired excuses, over and over. And another human life is forfeit.
Mistakes” or intentional, it’s time the law got involved, and real jail time and penalties are levied against the parents.
I believe the reality is that many Americans think of dogs as incredibly lovable stuffed animals and ignore their true animal nature.
I am an intelligent and educated person, but less than a year ago, I truly had no idea that a dog had ever killed a person. I actually read a book to my children that claimed that no wolf had ever attacked a human in North America. That seemed fishy, so I began researching wolf attacks…which led me to wonder if pet dogs ever attack. I was completely blown away when I learned about all of the grisly deaths perpetrated by domestic dogs. Everyone with whom I share the information is equally flabbergasted. News stories are usually quite brief and downplayed—I believe that very few people know that family pets actually do kill on a regular basis.
For those of us who now read about this subject regularly, it seems SO obvious that a pit bull or other attack breed is dangerous. But we need to remember that not only is the pro-pit bull campaign quite effective, the general dog-loving public also believes pet dogs of any size to be incapable of violence.
I think that it is in everyone’s best interest to peacefully educate people with the facts. True, some will choose to believe the lies about dangerous breeds. But many other dog lovers, like myself, simply do not know the facts and truly benefit from sites like this one which provide eye-opening data. I still love dogs, but I can now teach my children which breeds to avoid, how to sift facts vs. emotions about breeds, and most of all—to respect dogs as animals (not mere playthings), which inherently includes understanding the predictable behavior of a particular breed/species + the UNpredictability of animal behavior.
Thank you for continuing to collect the data, Colleen. I hope more people learn the truth about dangerous dogs so that these tragic maulings and deaths decrease.
Good comment.
Another thing that I think contributes to the lack of awareness that people do get killed by domestic dogs, and on a regular basis, is the numbers. Eighty million dogs in the U.S. versus three to four dozen human dog bite fatalities each year. Strictly in terms of numbers, that ratio drowns out awareness of the fatalities, because the fatalities are anomalies — the extremely rare exception to people’s experiences with dogs.
Saying the fatalities are anomalies, however, doesn’t mean that the current levels of fatalities should be accepted. Fatalities caused by unnecessary risks should not be happening. Pit bulls and other fighting dogs should not be kept or treated as pets. Remove pit bulls from the equation, and the fatality numbers would be half of what they are. Further reductions can be made by not leaving infants or very young children unattended around any dog physically capable of causing grievous harm to those infants or children; by culling loose dog populations in communities where they have become a scourge; by enforcing mandatory leash laws; by euthanizing aggressive dogs with records of unprovoked bites on humans or unprovoked attacks on other domestic animals.
Eliminating unnecessary risks would reduce dog bite fatalities to a fraction of their current number. It would mean just about the only fatalities we would see would be adult dog owners. In other words, the people who consented to the risk of choosing the dog they did.
The outrageous nature of the current fatalities, even though they are anomalies in terms of numbers, is that such a high percentage of them are people who did NOT consent to own or be around the dog/s that ultimately killed them. Babies and children killed by their parents’ or grandparents’ or babysitters’ dogs. Seniors killed by dogs owned by their adult children who have moved back in with them. People killed by their neighbors’ uncontrolled aggressive dogs.
The risk should not be borne by people who did not consent to it.
Female came from Nicole Gray and male was purchased from a pet store.
Good gosh, those comments are horrific. I can’t understand people still running to the defence of dangerous dogs. The injuries from falling down the stairs and being mauled by a beast dog are in no way similar. At this point, those defenders are reaching to the moon for ways to claim this girl’s death was an accident. And it is beyond rude to attempt to say what the victim would be saying about the dog that killed them should they have survived. In my experience following these attack, most child victims are horribly traumatized. Incredibly insensitive and downright heartless.
I completely agree. 1) there is no defense for a dog that kills a human, it needs to be euthanized. 2) pathologists are highly trained, and they can absolutely tell the difference between someone who died from falling down the stairs, and someone who was killed by a dog mauling them. I suspect even many laypeople could make a pretty good guess, based on the condition of the body. I suspect these commentators are clueless about the difference between a dog bite and a dog mauling. 3) the idea that we should forgive the dogs because someone thinks the 11 year old girl would want us to is ludicrous. We have no idea what the 11 year old girl would want, not to mention that 11 year olds aren’t allowed to make most decisions for themselves. The dogs should be euthanized regardless of what the 11 year old wants, because she is too young to understand the entire situation.
An expert breeder of Neapolitan Mastiffs and Veterinarian, Dr. Sherilyn Allen warned in her book, The Official Book of Neapolitan Mastiff, that this breed should not be trusted around small children. (reference pages 173-174 in her 2nd edition). People need to research the breed. Get another breed until your kids are grown. Yes, some Neos can do well with children, but if you’re wrong, it is never worth it. Never worth it!. Never worth it!
Why would the father make his Facebook background and profile pics be pics of Skylar and the dog that killed her? Why would they also have the child’s funeral memorial on Facebook live?
Okay, so they have one humongous dog that’s “only aggressive” to their other humongous dog.
With a child in the house where two huge war dogs are battling it out they don’t even bother to remove the aggressor dog to keep peace around the child who must have been terrified.
Never occurred to them that the child could get hurt in the middle of this.
Got it.
That child deserved smarter parents and a full life.
Colleen, I know you feel that this family is grieving and this is the reason for the GoFundMe, well, they increased the pot from 10K to 25K. It is still active with over 18K in it. How is this explained?