A 3-year-old was hospitalized in critical condition after he was attacked by his family dogs, per Tennessee officials.
Memphis police reported that at least five dogs attacked the toddler around 5:00 pm Monday, March 6. First responders transported the child to Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in critical condition. As of the latest reports, he remains in critical condition but hospital staff was able to stabilize him.
The toddler’s father now faces multiple criminal charges, including a felony charge of child endangerment and harboring dangerous/vicious dogs. Memphis Animal Services also cited the father for failure to maintain dogs, dangerous vicious dogs, dogs at large, and rabies shots and tags.
Animal Control seized the family dogs, described by Memphis police as pit bulls. The father, 26-year-old Kendale Taylor, maintains that the dogs are not pit bulls. Instead, he claims they’re Boxer/Belgian Malinois mixes.
In an interview with Action News 5, the father added that the dogs are 3 to 5-month-old puppies from an unwanted litter. He called the brutal attack “an accident,” saying that the toddler wandered outside unattended.
The dogs behind the attack are currently in a 10-day mandatory quarantine for rabies, standard procedure following any bite, along with four other mixed-breed dogs impounded from the scene. After their quarantine, a court will decide the next steps.
Toddler Survived Family Dog Attack Thanks to Concerned Neighbors
According to witnesses, the child was not only attacked by his family dogs but the parents were nowhere in sight. Hearing the small child screaming, neighbors rushed to his aid, where they found the dogs attacking him in a field near his home. One passerby stopped his car to pull the dogs off the child while others called the police.
“Bite marks all over the baby’s head, the face, the body. [First responders] had to put a trach (tube) in his throat so he could breathe,” Paul McCorkle, a witness, told WHBQ. “[The dogs] grabbed the baby and they were trying to bite him. They were biting him. If it wasn’t for the good person who was in the car, they probably would have eaten him.”
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the neighborhood’s first experience with the “vicious” dogs, per neighbors. The family’s dogs have long been an issue in the area. “You go to walk to the shopping center and try to come back this way, you’re going to have problems because of the mama dog,” Michael Armstrong, a family neighbor, told WREG.
Per police records, the father amassed a staggering 16 citations for the family dogs in 2020 alone. Nine of those charges related to allowing the dogs to run free throughout the neighborhood. The other seven were in regard to a violation of the city’s spay/neuter ordinance.
“It’s very sad when you should’ve just put the dogs up,” Armstrong said sorrowfully. “Why’d you even bring all these dogs over here? What do you need all those dogs for?”