An Alabama mother has shared her heartbreak after her two-year-old son was mauled to death by her neighbor’s dogs.
Kayla Partain said her youngest child Mark Alan was attacked in their neighbor’s yard in New Hope, Alabama on Friday, leaving her “completely shattered.”
‘The pain is unreal. I don’t even feel like I’m living in reality. My children’s hearts are so broken,” she said in a tragic Facebook post.
Neighbor Ricky Clark believes the tragic accident happened after the boy opened the gate to his backyard himself and insisted his dogs had never harmed anyone.
Mark Alan Pertain, 2, was fatally mauled by his neighbor’s dogs in a horror attack in New Hope, Alabama, on Friday
The toddler’s stricken mother Kayla said she was ‘completely devastated’ by the loss of her son
Neighbor Ricky Clark said he saw the child’s lifeless body in his yard but is baffled by the attack because his dogs have never harmed anyone in the past
As the fatal mauling unfolded in Clark’s backyard on Friday, he said he was shocked by the blood-curdling screams of the stricken father outside his home.
“He banged on the door really hard and said, ‘It’s my son, it’s my son, I think he might be dead,'” Clark said. WHERE.
He said he ran outside and the two-year-old was “lying on the ground” in front of his doghouse, and he “wasn’t moving or anything and the gate was open.”
The Madison County coroner’s office pronounced Mark dead at the scene, and coroner Dr. Tyler Berryhill ruled he suffered fatal bite wounds.
Clark said he was stunned by the random attack because he insists his two dogs, a Husky and a German Shepherd, have never hurt anyone in the past.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he continued.
“My dogs never go outside or bark at anyone or anything… if I had even had an idea that the dogs would hurt anyone, I wouldn’t have had them.”
Clark speculated that the attack may have been sparked by the presence of a local bulldog, which he said had recently been roaming the area.
Clark said he ran outside to his yard (pictured) after hearing the boy’s father’s blood-curdling screams, where he saw the toddler “wasn’t moving.”
“There’s a brown bulldog in the neighborhood, and he was running around in the yard,” he said, adding that it was not uncommon to see the dog running freely in the neighborhood.
“When I let my dog hang up, I saw her running out of the yard, and I don’t know if she had anything to do with it.”
He felt the toddler may have seen the dogs and followed them into his backyard, which he said was locked but not locked WAF.
“Maybe he opened the gate and maybe the other dog came in with him, and then maybe they all went for it, and maybe he was in the middle of it,” he said.
Clark’s dogs were seized by animal control, who told him they would be returned within 10 days.
Mark’s heartbroken mother Kayla said the devastating loss will “never get easier” but said that before the investigation is completed, “it appears this was just a very tragic accident that could not have been anyone’s fault.”
“Last night our world completely fell apart,” she wrote on Saturday.
‘I lost my youngest child, my mini-me, my Mark Alan. The pain is unreal. I don’t even feel like I’m living in reality. My children’s hearts are so broken.’
Mark’s devastated mum said the toddler and her other son Cole (pictured together) were ‘thieving’, and since the tragedy Cole has ‘asked for him several times a day’
The stricken mother said her eldest son Cole has been left bereft by the loss of his young son and has not yet come to terms with the reality of the tragedy.
On Tuesday, she said in another post that the two toddlers were “always as thick as thieves” and had never been apart for even a day.
“Cole has been asking about him several times a day. Either he just repeats his name or he asks where he is,” she said.
‘It breaks my heart so much. It sends the whole house into a spiral of emotions every time.’
A family friend shared one GoFundMe to help the family cope with the financial burden of the loss.