BELIZE CITY, Mon. Jan. 14, 2019– Another young child has been seriously injured after being bitten by a dog on Sunday, January 13, in the Rootsville area.

At around 3 o’clock that afternoon, Carlton Pitts, age unknown, was inside a room that he rents while his 4-year-old stepson, Ellis Ortiz, was playing in the yard right outside the room. After a while, he heard the child screaming and he rushed outside.

He then saw his landlord’s dog biting Ortiz’s face and Pitts, along with the landlord, rescued the child and rushed him to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. Ortiz sustained injuries to his forehead and jaw.

According to police, it is difficult to say whether or not charges will be brought against anyone, since the dog, whose breed was unknown to police, had been tied up at the time of the attack and it was the child who went too close to it.

Just last year, in June, a 2-year-old baby, Kyle Carter, was also suddenly viciously bitten by his family’s pit-bull. The dog dragged him around the yard and the baby could only be rescued after the family repeatedly beat the dog. After the baby was rescued, he needed over a hundred stitches in his face.

Also in April of last year, 3-year-old Jase Brown was bitten by a Rottweiler while walking home with his father in Belmopan. The dog, which randomly pounced on the child, bit the baby’s neck and ear as his father was attempting to lift the child out of harm’s way.

Brown’s father ran from the dog, but it kept coming at them, even causing them to fall into a drain. It wasn’t until the father found a piece of board and repeatedly hit the dog that they were able to escape.

The baby ended up with a maimed right ear and bite marks in his back as well as gashes on his left arm.