A six-year-old girl was strangled Tuesday when her 70-pound golden retriever took the girl’s scarf in its mouth and dragged her around the backyard of the family home, police said Thursday.
Kaitlyn Hassard was found unconscious behind her home in Manorville, New York, a Long Island community about 70 miles east of Manhattan. The girl’s mother, a registered nurse, administered CPR but the girl was pronounced dead at a local hospital about an hour later, said Suffolk County Police Department Detective Lt. Jack Fitzpatrick.
“The dog previously had been tugging on the child’s scarf and the mother put the dog in the backyard,” Fitzpatrick said. “You could tell from the torn scarf, the drag marks and the mud on her clothes that she had been dragged by the dog.”
Fitzpatrick said the dog had no known history of acting out against Kaitlyn or other family members.
He said it was not clear whether the dog, who has been taken to a shelter, would be destroyed. “We wouldn’t have a role in that,” Fitzpatrick said.
