WESTFIELD – Doctors were working yesterday afternoon to save the arm of an eight-year-old boy. It was the second surgery on the boy, who had been bitten by his family’s dog Tuesday afternoon.
The boy had been taken to the hospital at about 4:30 p.m. suffering from a serious wound inflicted on his arm by the dog.
City police report that Officer Patrick Shea was approached shortly before 6 p.m. while he was at Noble Hospital for an unrelated matter, by the father of a boy who had been bitten by a dog.
Shea said that the man told him that the family dog had been outside the family’s home in the Abner Gibbs neighborhood of the city and, when his son was letting the three-year-old American bulldog back inside, the dog bit the boy.
He said that the dog has “territorial issues” and asked that it be removed from his home.
Shea said that the boy’s wound had already been bandaged and that medical staff said that the wound was superficial at his shoulder but became deep and extensive further down the boy’s arm.
Shea reports that he was told that the brachial artery had been damaged and the injury had compromised circulation in the boy’s arm.
The boy was transported by ambulance to Baystate Medical Center, a Level 1 trauma center, for surgery, Shea reported.
The boy was treated in the hospital’s intensive care center yesterday, and, in the afternoon, underwent a second surgery. The hospital was unable to provide any new information at press time this morning.
Shortly before 8 p.m. Tuesday, animal control officer Kerri Francis transported the dog to the municipal shelter on Apremont Way.
Kenneth Frazer, the city’s director of animal control operations, said that the boy’s father had made the decision to euthanize the dog.
Frazer agreed to house the dog and will take it to a vet where the owner could arrange for it to be euthanized and tested for rabies.
Frazer said that the boy was bitten “high up on the arm, near the shoulder” and that an artery had been damaged.
He said that the boy’s parents told him yesterday that the doctors “were trying to save the child’s arm but they don’t know if they’re going to be able to.”
