A two-year-old boy mauled by a pack of stray dogs in Taichung’s Taiping District (太平) on Tuesday is recovering from his injuries at the China Medical University Hospital, sources said yesterday.
The hospital confirmed that the toddler, surnamed Ko (柯), was being treated at its facility, while Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) told city councilors that the youngster was out of critical condition as of yesterday morning.
The boy was reportedly attacked near an orchard in the mountains in the Chelungpu (車籠埔) area, where his grandmother is employed as a temporary worker to pick lychee by the orchard’s owners — a family surnamed Lu (盧).
Photo courtesy of Taichung City Government’s Information Bureau
Ko had been brought to the orchard by his grandmother, and when the pickers finished their work for the day at 4pm, they returned to the courtyard of the Lu home with the boy, sources said.
An unnamed male relative of the Lus noticed that Ko was no longer playing in the courtyard, and started searching for him along a public road near the orchard, sources said.
The man found Ko being attacked by a group of dogs about 30m along the road. He rescued Ko, whose clothing had been shredded in the attack, and carried the badly injured child to the Lu house.
Other Lu family members called emergency services and then transported the boy down the mountain on a scooter to where an ambulance was waiting, sources said.
Ko was initially treated at Taichung Armed Forces General Hospital, where officials said that he had suffered “extensive lacerations” to his ears, arms and buttocks, and “the wounds were too many to count.”
They said surgeons had worked for six hours to stabilize the child’s condition.
The man who found Ko said he believed that had he arrived a few minutes later, “the dogs would have torn the boy to pieces.”
Taichung Animal Protection and Health Inspection Office head Lin Ju-liang (林儒良) said that his officers had captured 14 stray dogs in the area, and were still searching for two additional strays.
The office had identified an individual, surnamed Lin (林), that it believes is legally responsible for the dogs because he has been feeding a pack of strays, Lin Ju-liang said.
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