Lakisha Moss can’t shake the gruesome, heartbreaking scene she witnessed Wednesday inside a neighbor’s living room.
The College Park woman was at home with her mother that afternoon when they heard loud shrieks and a neighbor’s dog making a “really weird sound.” They went next door to investigate.
“I opened the door and I saw the baby laying there,” Moss said. “There was a pool of blood, blood over all the walls and everything.”
Two-year-old Beau Rutledge had been attacked by his family’s pet of eight years, a mixed-breed American Staffordshire terrier that shares the same background as the pit bull terrier. Beau’s mother, Angela Rutledge, had gone to the bathroom, and when she came out, her only son was no longer breathing.
“My dog just killed my son!” she repeated to a 911 operator in a harrowing call from her south Fulton townhouse.
What caused the dog to attack the toddler is unclear. Police say they’ve received no previous complaints about the Amstaff.
“We had nothing in our report system,” Fulton County Police Sgt. Scott McBride said Thursday.
Beau Rutledge was the second Georgia toddler this month killed by a pit bull breed. A little more than three weeks ago in tiny Ellabell, 30 miles west of Savannah, a 21-month-old girl slipped through a dog door into the backyard, where she was mauled to death by the family’s seven dogs.
There have been several similar incidents in the metro area over the past few years, and after a Lithonia 10-year-old was mauled by two pit bulls in March 2010, DeKalb County briefly enacted a pit bull ban. It was subsequently lifted after officials determined enforcement was impossible.
The dogs have their defenders. A 2008 study by the University of Pennsylvania, for instance, found that pit bulls were no more aggressive toward strangers and their owners than other breeds.
“We’ve got to look at behavior, not breed,” said Victoria Stilwell, a dog trainer and canine aggression expert based in Atlanta.
It’s unknown whether the Amstaff was spayed or neutered. Male dogs that haven’t been neutered are responsible for most of these attacks, Stilwell said.
“You’ve got to find out not just the behavior of the dog, but the family that owns it,” she added.
And there’s always a risk when you leave a child alone with a dog, regardless of breed, Stilwell said.
The fate of the Rutledges’ dog remains unclear. Animal control workers took it to a shelter for evaluation, and as of Thursday evening, the Amstaff was still alive.
Fulton police, the district attorney’s office and the Fulton Medical Examiner are all involved in determining the canine’s fate.
Moss and another neighbor, Kendra Clopton, said the dog, which was kept indoors, showed no signs of aggressiveness.
“I don’t know what went through the dog’s mind, but it wasn’t a vicious dog,” Clopton said.
No charges have been filed against the parents, McBride said, though the investigation is ongoing.
The mother was “extremely distraught” and was taken to South Fulton Medical Center for treatment, McBride said. The father returned home from his job at Woodward Academy and became “very hysterical and irate,” the incident report states. A Taser was used to subdue Jeremiah Rutledge, according to the report. Beau’s older sister was at school when the attack happened.
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