Two young boys, as young boys are wont to do, went to “get” coconuts from a neighbour’s yard, and when they were attacked by two rottweilers, one of them paid with his life for the adventure.
On Saturday, between the hours of 2:00 and 3:00 p.m., in the Hill View area of Santa Elena Town, Cayo, David Moltavan, 9, and Dualvin Salinas, 7, climbed over the chain-link part of a fence to get into the yard.
Although the boys knew, or ought to have known, that inside the yard were a pair of rottweiler dogs, a male and female, they still went ahead. The boys were attacked by the dogs, and ran, apparently trying to reach the fence, but Dualvin Salinas , the 7-year-old, could not make it back to safety in time. The dogs, named King and Queen, attacked him, biting him in the throat, and he was killed on the spot.
The dogs’ owner, Finley Maxwell Monsanto, was asleep inside his home at the time.
“I did not hear anything,” Monsanto told Amandala this afternoon. He has had the two dogs about one year now. “They are not imported,” Monsanto said, “I got them right here in Cayo.”
This is the first time that his dogs had attacked someone, Monsanto explained. When asked how the children got into his yard, he said that he suspected that they came over the back fence.
Monsanto said that he learned that the incident had happened when a young girl from over there (he pointed across to the next street, where a crowd had gathered under a makeshift tent) came and told me that someone had jumped over my fence.
“She asked me to look around to see if anyone was in my yard. When I looked, I saw the body of this young kid over there,” he pointed to the southern corner of his yard.
“He was already dead. The dog bit him in his throat,” Monsanto said. “I got to understand that the kids came into the yard before. I would never allow the dogs to bite that little boy, if I was around.”
According to Marlene Lemus, 18, an aunt of Dualvin Salinas, he was living with them because his mother and father were charged with weapons possession almost one year now, and they have not been able to secure bail. Salinas lived with his aunt and grandmother.
“I don’t really know what happened on Saturday. All I know is that Dualvin was here with us, he had lunch and he was here playing with another kid. He was playing with a machete in the hammock and I took it away. I don’t know if he got mad and came outside. After that, I don’t know where he went. Then my neighbor came and told me that he was in the yard. I did not believe it at first. I went to look around for him, but I did not find him, Lemus said.
Asked if there was a problem with the dogs before, Lemus said no, because they were always locked up.
Dualvin, who was from Guatemala, had lived with his parents, Norma Yessenia Albeno and Giovannie Jacinto Cardena, both of Guatemala, until they got arrested and charged for possession of an unlicensed shotgun. They were living in the village of Arenal when the parents were arrested on September 12, 2008, Lemus said.
Lemus said that when they were taken to prison, they left a baby who was only forty-three-days-old. Dualvin also has a 4-year-old sister.
Lemus said that when she learned that her nephew was in the yard dead, she called the San Ignacio Police Station. Her call was answered by a woman who told her that the police had nothing to do with that. Lemus said that she had to call the police in Belize City before she could get the San Ignacio police to come out to Hill View.
“If they never want to come, I said that I was going to the station to get them,” Lemus said.
According to Dualvin’s teacher, Mrs. Nelly Pook, he was a very obedient child and one who was very loving. “When I got him he did not know how to speak any English. But within a short time he was speaking Creole. He was also good in math. He was an infant two student who began school late.”
Inside Dualvin’s grandmother’s house, a crowd had gathered. A small wooden coffin was in the center of the living room, as pockets of people conversed in low voices. Dualvin will be laid to rest tomorrow, Tuesday.
The police said that a post-mortem would be performed, but did not say whether any charges would be brought against the dogs’ owner, Findley Monsanto.