A Massachusetts boy passed away after a pack of dogs he was taking care of mauled him to death while on their owner’s property.
ABC 5 reports that the grandmother of 14-year-old Ryan Hazel, of Rehoboth, took the boy to a property off of Maple Swamp Road in North Dighton, at around 6 p.m on Thursday, where he was supposed to tend to the dogs. After an over an hour passed and Ryan hadn’t returned back to his grandmother’s car, she became worried and called the boy’s parents.
Ryan’s parents, out of town at the time, called a neighbor, who walked to the property and spotted the boy on the ground, unconscious from an apparent attack.
The neighbor called 911 and attempted CPR, but Ryan died at the scene, according to the outlet. Bristol County District Attorney Thomas Quinn said that when authorities arrived, they found four dogs wandering loosely and seven dogs inside cages.
“It appears at this point that foul play was not involved. I would just leave it at that at this stage of the investigation,” Quinn said.
The dogs’ owner, identified as 49-year-old Scott Dunmore, was not home when the incident occurred, but he’s reportedly cooperating with investigators. Dunmore reportedly runs a dog training business from his home, but Quinn said the man did not have a license for the pups on his property.
Ryan, a freshman football player at freshman at Bristol-Plymouth Vocational Technical High School, was said to have loved animals. According to CBS Boston, Ryan regularly took the care of the dogs when the property owners were away. It’s still unclear why the dogs turned on the boy.
“The dogs that were outside were Dutch Shepherds and Belgian Malinois,” Quinn added.
Superintendent of Ryan’s school, Superintendent Alexandre Magalhaes, said the boy was friendly “a loved member of our student body.”
“Things like that should never happen to anybody, never mind a 14-year-old boy,” Dighton Police Chief Robert MacDonald said, according to Mass Live.
Authorities are still investigating and trying to determine why a pack of dogs the boy routinely cared for turned on him. All of the dogs are currently quarantined while the investigation continued.
[Feature Photo: Ryan Hazel/Handout]
