What was sup­posed to be qual­i­ty time with his grand­moth­er, end­ed in the vi­o­lent and bloody death of four-year-old Amazi­ah Lewis of San Juan yes­ter­day af­ter he was mauled by a Rot­tweil­er.

Ac­cord­ing to eye­wit­ness­es and rel­a­tives, Lewis came with his three sib­lings to Sa­van­nah Dri­ve, Tacarigua where his 67-year-old grand­moth­er was the care­tak­er of a home, in the ab­sence of its own­er, when the Rot­tweil­er dog broke out of its ken­nel. The dog im­me­di­ate­ly took aim for lit­tle Amazi­ah, who it spot­ted in the yard at the time.

Con­struc­tion work­er, Rekesh Boodoo was work­ing up­stairs at a neigh­bour­ing house and had a bird’s eye view of the hor­ri­fy­ing in­ci­dent as it un­fold­ed just af­ter 11 am.

“I just see the dog come out and I see the child run so and I see the dog run be­hind the child and I telling my pad­na- I say boy that dog go­ing and eat that child you know and the old la­dy start to run and she flip over brap, brap, brap,” he said while ges­tur­ing. 

“That dog hold on to that child and the la­dy hold­ing the child foot so and the dog grab on the child by he neck and she pulling one side and that dog hold­ing and shak­ing, shak­ing, shak­ing, shak­ing, shak­ing that child and let go­ing and bit­ing, let go­ing and bit­ing, let go­ing and bit­ing,” Boodoo said.

Boodoo said he and the friend ran im­me­di­ate­ly to the child’s aid, jump­ing the wall with a lad­der and chas­ing the dog off with scrap pieces of wood. He said, they grabbed a bleed­ing Lewis and jumped over the wall to safe­ty. 

“That was it there... the child was breath­ing when I bring the child you know- breath­ing, gasp­ing for breath. Is about 20 min­utes to half an hour the child lie down on the (ex­ple­tive used) ground there,” he said. 

“You wouldn’t like to see that ex­pe­ri­ence. That was hor­ri­fy­ing. Se­ri­ous. The dog wasn’t let go­ing the child.”

He said the am­bu­lance took about an hour and a half to ar­rive on the scene and Boodoo was vis­i­bly up­set about it. How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted they may not have been able to save the four-year-old. 

“That kin­da bite, you have no sav­ing there,” he lament­ed.

Boodoo said the po­lice were the first on the scene and, ac­cord­ing to him, had no choice but to put down the an­i­mal. 

“The po­lice come and kill the dog. About 20 shots they deal out. Run down the dog and shoot down the dog. They had was to kill the dog be­cause the dog run­ning right around look­ing to find...the next two chil­dren,” he said.

Aunt says grand­moth­er blames her­self for at­tack

Lit­tle Amazi­ah’s step-aunt, Rechae­line Stew­art said it was the chil­dren’s first time com­ing over to Tacarigua and meet­ing the dog. She said it is be­lieved Lewis thought the dog want­ed to play be­cause he’s ac­cus­tomed to dogs where he lives in San Juan. How­ev­er, she said her moth­er (Amazi­ah’s grand­moth­er) was blam­ing her­self for the in­ci­dent.

“It’s not her fault but the chil­dren were left in her care so any­body would feel a sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty if some­thing like that hap­pen you know?” Stew­art said.

“The moth­er of the child is not in any way, form or fash­ion up­set or holds her re­spon­si­ble for it be­cause it could have hap­pened to my two (chil­dren) if they were here and she did take the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions as in pen­ning up the dog and mak­ing sure the dog was se­cured and still telling them (the chil­dren) to stay in­side.”

Short­ly af­ter Guardian Me­dia ar­rived on the scene, Lewis’ moth­er was seen leav­ing the home- her vest cov­ered in her son’s blood.

She nor Lewis’ step-fa­ther were in a con­di­tion to of­fer much by way of com­ment to the me­dia as they were vis­i­bly trau­ma­tised and clear­ly try­ing to make sense of the hor­rif­ic tragedy which oc­curred.