On May 4, 2025, an Oklahoma father sent his 6-year-old son out of the house to retrieve a phone charger from the car. He was only gone for five minutes. But that was enough time for the child to be attacked and severely injured by a group of dogs in his front yard. Someone called the police and deputies arrived five minutes later.
As they pulled up to the home in rural Cleveland County, they saw the father carrying his son’s limp and bloody body in his arms. Even after the damage that had already been done, a growling and barking dog followed behind the father and son.
The boy had ‘an ungodly amount of bite wounds,’ a deputy wrote.
Before deputies arrived, the father found his son covered in blood and bite marks. Someone called police at 7:28 p.m. that Sunday evening, The Kansas City Star reports. “His body from head to toe had an ungodly amount of bite wounds” and he had no pulse, the deputy wrote. For a moment, it seemed the boy would pull through. When first responders performed CPR, the boy started breathing.
The boy died at the hospital.
“He was trying to talk but could only mumble,” the deputy wrote. “I had the child’s hand in mine and it was cold to the touch.” The ambulance transported him from the residence to the hospital. He was pronounced dead at 8:37 p.m.
Spots of blood around the yard showed the boy tried to escape.
The boy was just feet away from his home when the attack happened, yet the child’s father didn’t hear anything. Investigators believe at least one of the dogs attacked him as soon as he left the house. There were several spots of blood around the yard that showed the boy tried to get away from the five dogs that were outside at the time of the attack.
The father got rid of all the dogs to protect his other children.
In addition to the 6-year-old, there were five other children in the home, News 9 reports. The family used an electric wire fence to keep the dogs contained on the property. Investigators aren’t sure which dogs were responsible for the boy’s death. Two of the dogs on the property had blood on their coats. After the attack, the father said he “wanted to get rid of all of them.”
“He said even if there’s a 5% chance that those dogs were involved, he couldn’t have it,” said John Szymanski, chief deputy of operations with the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office. All five dogs have since been euthanized. Since the attack, the boy’s uncle launched a GoFundMe to support the family during this unexpected tragedy.
