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LAYTON — Two dogs involved in an incident where a 4-year-old boy had his hand bitten off were surrendered to Davis County Animal Care and Control, officials said Wednesday, and charges against their owner will be dropped.
Rhett Nicks, director of Davis County Animal Care and Control, initially said the owner of the two huskies was cited Wednesday with possession of dangerous animals and abatement of public nuisance animals.
However, Nicks said the dogs' owner, whose name was not released, contacted the department immediately after officials publicly announced the citations and decided they would turn in their huskies to the county. "The process of finding an animal rescue or animal sanctuary for the dogs has begun," Nicks said.
Nicks told KSL Newsradio that the dogs weren't deemed aggressive by animal control, but the incident was severe enough for them to take away the dogs. Had officials determined the dogs to be aggressive, they could have been euthanized, he said.
"We just tried to come up with the best solution for all parties involved," Nicks said. "The only word I can say is 'tragic.' Our heart goes out to the child. I couldn't imagine having a child in that situation.
"At the same time, I've got a family losing a family pet, so there's just no winning in this case at all it seems like," he added.
The dog's owner had met with Davis County officials Tuesday, where the county offered to relocate the dogs to an animal rescue or animal sanctuary instead of going through courts about the dog’s fate, but the owners declined at that time, Nicks said.
As a result of turning in the dogs to authorities Wednesday, Nicks said the citations agains the owners will be dropped. The huskies have remained in quarantine since the incident, he said, and will likely be sent to an organization somewhere out of state.
The animal control investigation began after an incident on March 3, where a 4-year-old boy had his hand bitten off by one of the dogs in the area of 1100 North and 3600 West.
Nicks said there were no eyewitnesses to the incident, which made the investigation difficult.
"We collected statements, evidence, pictures — anything and everything we could," he said. "We were dealing with a lot of circumstantial evidence, things that people heard or physical evidence we had on scene. It was definitely difficult when there was no eyewitness."
Nicks said the department wasn't able to figure out which dog bit the boy, either. He said they were never able to recover the boy's hand.
We just tried to come up with the best solution for all parties involved ... there's just no winning in this case at all it seems like.
–Rhett Nicks, director of Davis County Animal Care and Control
There have been differing accounts of what happened.
On the day of the incident, Layton Fire Battalion Chief Jason Cook said the child had a sock on his right hand and reached through a fence to play with two huskies in a neighboring yard. One of the dogs bit down and amputated his hand about 2 or 3 inches above his wrist.
Hope Brown, the mother of the injured boy, said in a Facebook post after the attack that the husky had gone under the fence separating the two yards "and bit Austin’s hand and then attempted to pull him back under the fence." She reiterated that it was an "unprovoked attack" in another Facebook post Wednesday.
The boy lost his arm from the elbow down. In Brown's Wednesday post, she wrote her son has since been released from the hospital and the family is getting used to a "new normal."
"The attack left him with only one bone below his elbow and 5 centimeters of forearm left," she wrote. "The doctors saved everything they could. They took the one bone, muscle, and tissue and saved his elbow joint which will be invaluable to him in the future to use not only for a prosthetic but to stabilize objects he’s holding ... Emotionally, he is a wreck, he’s scared, he’s so angry. He can’t leave my side without panicking. Going from being a willful, sweet, happy, loving, and empathetic little guy to an angry and confused small child has been awful."
Nicks said the entire situation was "unfathomable." He added that he found the online treatment of both families troubling as well.
"Folks have already harassed both families. I wish people wouldn't do that," he said. "It just makes this situation just all the more worse."
Contributing: KSL NewsRadio's "Dave and Dujanovic"
