A FOUR-year-old British boy was mauled to death yesterday by a dog as his grandmother tried to protect him.
John-Paul Massey died at a house in Wavertree, Liverpool, shortly after midnight. The dog, thought to be an American bull mastiff, was later shot by police in the front garden.
The dog is believed to belong to John-Paul’s uncle, Christian Foulkes, who was not at the house at the time.
Local police said when the dog attacked John-Paul his grandmother, Helen Foulkes (63), managed to remove it from the house, sustaining bites, before contacting police. She was taken to hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening.
Yesterday it emerged police had received a report in February that dogs were being bred at the house but the information was not acted upon.
The tragedy, the fifth dog attack death involving children since 2006, echoes the death of five-year-old Ellie Lawrenson in St Helens, Merseyside, on New Year’s Day 2007, when she was bitten 72 times by her uncle’s pit bull. In the aftermath of her death, Merseyside police held a dangerous dogs amnesty and rounded up 80 illegally held dogs.
In February this year Jaden Mack, aged 3½ months, was killed by a Staffordshire bull terrier and a Jack Russell at his grandmother’s home in Ystrad Mynach, south Wales.
In Wavertree, a neighbour said the dog “would snarl at everyone he walked past. Everyone in the street was wary of it.” – (Guardian service)