{"id":90037,"date":"2016-10-26T14:00:46","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T18:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/breaking911.com\/?p=90037"},"modified":"2016-10-26T14:00:46","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T18:00:46","slug":"4-year-old-girl-tried-give-new-dog-treat-instead-turned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/breaking911.com\/4-year-old-girl-tried-give-new-dog-treat-instead-turned\/","title":{"rendered":"A 4-year-old girl tried to give her new dog a treat. Instead, it turned on her."},"content":{"rendered":"
The dog attack that took place Sunday afternoon on a leafy street in southwestern Michigan happened so quickly – and was so tragic – that neighbors say they can’t get out of their minds what they witnessed.<\/p>\n
Rebecca Davis told WWMT News that she heard frantic screaming around 4 p.m. Sunday outside her home in Sturgis, about 125 miles west of Detroit.<\/p>\n
Rushing outside, Davis told the news station she found her next-door neighbor, Jacey McNeal Wolkins, sobbing hysterically over the body of her 4-year-old daughter, Kiyana McNeal.<\/p>\n
Their new dog, which had just been delivered to their home that day, had reportedly attacked the little girl out of nowhere, Davis told the station.<\/p>\n
“She said she had just bought the dog and the [seller] probably hadn’t been gone five minutes, and just that fast the dog attacked,” Davis said.<\/p>\n
The girl had apparently been trying to give a treat to the dog when it suddenly lunged for her neck, WWMT reported.<\/p>\n
McNeal Wolkins tried in vain to stop the attack, getting bitten in the process; she was later taken to a hospital with injuries to her head and hands, according to the Associated Press.<\/p>\n
Davis’s husband, Kenneth, told WWMT that the man who sold them the dog rushed back to the home and tried to perform CPR on Kiyana.<\/p>\n
“He was really distraught,” Kenneth Davis told the station. “You can imagine it, seemed that he was crying and he was really bad. You can imagine how he would feel.”<\/p>\n
Kiyana died from the attack, and the dog, identified as a Doberman Pinscher or Doberman mix, was taken away by animal control, according to the AP.<\/p>\n
“It’s something nobody should see. Nobody,” Rebecca Davis added. “You just don’t expect nothing like that to happen to a child.”<\/p>\n
The new dog was supposed to be a replacement for “Willow,” another Doberman that Kiyana and her mother used to have before that dog died from cancer about two months ago, other family members told Mlive.com.<\/p>\n
Lorie May, Kiyana’s stepmother, told the news site they had found a 3-year-old Doberman for sale in Illinois, and that the man had driven to Michigan to deliver the dog on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The man stayed for about 30 to 45 minutes, as Kiyana and her mother became acquainted with the dog, before leaving, May told the site.<\/p>\n
On her Facebook page, May said it was “the worst week of our lives” and posted photos and videos of Kiyana dancing with her father, striking silly poses, reading a book and singing a spirited karaoke rendition of Alicia Keys’s “This Girl Is On Fire.”<\/p>\n
“Sing [your] beautiful heart out in Heaven,” May wrote in a video caption. “Share the same joy you gave us.”<\/p>\n
Sara Arousell, who said she was a family friend, described Kiyana as “vibrant, smart, funny and the sweetest little girl you’d ever know” on a GoFundMe page she set up to help cover funeral expenses for Kiyana.<\/p>\n
The 4-year-old girl was “very passionate about animals and helping them” and her mother had hoped she might become a veterinarian someday.<\/p>\n
“I have known little Kiyana from birth, and I can personally tell you that she was definitely one of a kind,” Arousell wrote. “I have never seen a mother-daughter relationship with such a bond as these two shared. Kiyana was the light of her mothers life, her reason for being. She is beyond grief stricken right now. . .”<\/p>\n
Arousell did not respond Wednesday morning to inquiries sent through GoFundMe and to a Facebook account in her name to verify the fundraising page.<\/p>\n
A person who answered the phone for the St. Joseph County sheriff’s department Wednesday morning said they could not provide details because the case is still an open investigation.<\/p>\n
Authorities have not confirmed what will happen to the dog that attacked Kiyana.<\/p>\n
Under St. Joseph County animal ordinances, any dog, “licensed or unlicensed, [that] has bitten or attacked a person or another animal,” may be ordered euthanized or otherwise restricted by a judge after a hearing.<\/p>\n
A couple dozen towns and cities in Michigan restrict certain dog breeds, but neither Sturgis nor Sherman Township are among them, according to dogsbite.org, a site that keeps track of such restrictions.<\/p>\n
(c) 2016, The Washington Post \u00b7 Amy B Wang<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n