A mother’s attempt to give her two-year-old son a better view of wild African dogs turned into a tragedy at the Pittsburgh Zoo after the boy fell into the exhibit and was killed by a pack of the animals as relatives and bystanders looked on.
The attack happened at about 11.45am on Sunday after the mother picked the child up and put him on top of a railing at the edge of a viewing deck.
“Almost immediately after that he lost his balance, fell down off the railing into the pit, and he was immediately attacked by 11 dogs,” Lieut Kevin Kraus of the Pittsburgh police said. A medical examiner concluded that the baby was killed by the animals, not by the fall, said Barbara Baker, president of the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium. Ms Baker said there is a net below the rail, but the boy bounced off it and into the enclosure.
She said the animals attacked the child so quickly that by the time a vet and other zoo staffers arrived seconds later, they decided it would have been futile to try to rescue the child. – (AP)