Family recalls dog attack on 13-year-old boy


Paul Egan / The Detroit News
Saturday, September 15, 2007

DETROIT -- A busted gate and a bloody broom remained at the scene Saturday of a family's desperate fight to save a 13-year-old Detroit boy from an attack by a neighbor's pit bull.

Michael Branch had surgery Saturday on his right leg, but doctors at Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit said he would need further operations within the next few days, Michael's mother Tameka Branch said.

"They're not sure how he's going to walk again," said Michael's grandfather, Roosevelt Shedrick, 76, who wielded a wrecking bar and a hammer Friday afternoon as he and Michael's mother tried to free Michael from the dog on Cherrylawn on Detroit's west side.

Michael's two brothers, Richard, 15, and Demescio, 14, were with Michael when the dog broke loose of its collar and crashed onto the sidewalk through an already loose front gate. The two older boys threw rocks while Richard struck the dog, named "Scooby," with a shop broom.

Michael, who ran to the back of the next-door neighbor's yard and tried to climb onto a shed before the dog pulled him down by the leg, even bit the dog on the neck as he fought to save himself, Richard said.
Police seized the dog Friday but there was no word Saturday on whether the dog had been put down. It was the latest in a spate of attacks by vicious dogs. Two people died following an attack Thursday by a pack of bulldogs in Livingston County's Iosco Township and a 4-month-old child died after a Wednesday attack in Warren involving a Rottweiler.

When Shedrick, a retired GM worker, arrived on the scene, the dog was in front of Michael, who was clutching both of the dog's ears in an attempt to fend off further bites, the grandfather said.

"I had a hammer -- I was going to try to hit him on the head," Shedrick said.

It appeared Michael, a 7th-Grade student Drew Middle School, had already given the dog quite a fight, he said. Michael suffered severe damage to his right calf and surrounding arteries and ligaments, as well as bites to his left leg, his mother said.

Michael's mother grabbed the dog by the ears to try to give her son a chance to get away, and just then, the dog's owner arrived, called off the dog, and chained it up, he said.

"Naturally, he was saying he's sorry and all that, but what good is that?" asked Shedrick.

The neighbor, who left immediately after the incident and had apparently not returned home Saturday, was aware of a broken gate that allowed the large brownish dog to crash through the fence, Shedrick said.

Before Friday's attack, "I told him I'd help him fix it," Shedrick said.

Nobody answered the door Saturday at the home of the dog's owner.

You can reach Paul Egan at (313) 222-2069 or pegan@detnews.com.