Police euthanized a family’s two dogs to figure out which one killed their infant

One of an Ohio family’s two pet dogs killed the family’s month-old child as the baby slept, according to a coroner’s report released this week.

The father of the child woke up to find the infant dead in a bassinet in the father’s bedroom, according to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. When he called police shortly after 6:00 a.m. on Sept. 20, he blamed the child’s death on one of the family’s dogs.

But two of the family’s dogs have been euthanized so authorities could figure out which canine killed the child. A necropsy of both dogs was performed to evaluate what was inside each of the dogs’ stomachs, according to 10TV.

Those results indicated that the dog that attacked the child was a light brown male pit bull or pit bull mix, 10TV reports.

Both dogs were pit bulls or pit bull mixes. They were removed from the family’s home by a dog warden officer after the Sept. 20 attack.

Knox County Coroner Jennifer Ogle told WCMH that the child had “suffered extensive blunt and crush force injuries with puncture injuries to the head resulting in his death.”

Before the child’s death, the month-old had been well taken care of and was in good health, the coroner found — and there was no trauma to the infant’s body beyond the injuries the dog inflicted.

“It broke my heart,” neighbor Ella Goheem told 10TV after the attack. “All I could do is just sit, sink down in the couch, and pray for them.”

A toxicology report on the infant is still pending, but it will likely be weeks before those results are available, according to 10TV.

Knox County Sheriff David Shaffer told the Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum that the toxicology report — as well as the full autopsy on the infant — could take up to eight weeks, largely because of an influx in drug-related deaths in Ohio.

This story was originally published September 28, 2017 at 8:37 PM with the headline "Police euthanized a family’s two dogs to figure out which one killed their infant."