Seven-month-old baby was mauled to death by family dog when she leaned on it while crawling, inquest hears

According to an inquest, a seven-month-old infant was mauled to death by her family’s pet dog after she allegedly “leant” on it while crawling on the living room floor.

In an attack that “transpired within a second or less,” Belgian Malinois Zeus bit Elle Doherty on the back of her head. The incident was caught on camera by an inside surveillance system.

According to a coroner, the 35 kg (4st 12 oz) dog had needed behaviorist sessions two years prior but had never before shown any signs of hostility. The court heard that the expert had been approached once more in the lead-up to the disaster regarding the dog’s behavior.

A sequence of still images from the security camera in the living room of the family home in Coventry, West Midlands, were shown to the inquest this morning. They showed Elle’s parents, Natasha and Sean Doherty, sitting on a sofa and watching television while the baby sat on the floor and gazed out the patio window.

The 39-year-old Mrs. Doherty was then seen leading the dog out to the kitchen and then coming back with a carrier bag that the dog seemed “fixated with.”

When Elle approached the dog, it showed little interest in the infant and kept staring at the red bag. Then, the following CCTV still showed Mrs. Doherty kneeling over the dog while her 37-year-old husband, Sean, jumped up.

Then, while his wife held their bleeding child, Mr. Doherty pulled the dog into the kitchen.

 

“My daughter was’mobile from an early age’ and started ‘rolling around’ at the age of three or four months,” Mr. Doherty told authorities in a statement. According to the Coventry Coroner’s Court, she started to crawl around unassisted a month prior to her death in June of last year.

The couple was “just chatting” as the baby played, and Mrs. Doherty was choosing which of Elle’s toys to send to a charity shop when “suddenly Tash shouted ‘No!'” Mr. Doherty described the incident.

He went on to say: “I jumped up and thought he had pinned (down) Archie, his mother-in-law’s French bulldog, who they were watching.” I was unaware that it was Elle.

I took hold of his collar and threw him outdoors. Elle was crying, and blood was streaming from her skull. It all happened so fast that I didn’t even see Zeus approach her.

According to the court, Elle was rushed to the hospital and declared dead about an hour later.

Head injuries from a dog attack were listed as the cause of death.

After the attack on June 16, Zeus was transported to a veterinarian and put down after being drugged in the backyard by a police dog handler. There is no classification of Belgian Malinois as a dangerous breed.

Mrs. Doherty stated in a statement read before coroner Delroy Henry that throughout the first six months of Zeus’s life, the couple sought the assistance of a dog trainer. However, they then hired a behaviorist for a few sessions in 2022 until the dog’s behavior improved. The behaviorist claimed the dog thought he was the “alpha” (male) of the family.

For months, Zeus had ‘nipped’ her, and she characterized him as’reactive’. They were instructed to “show that we were the alphas in the house, not the dog,” according to her. “If we were able to get his behavior under control inside the house, it would carry over outside,” she continued. It was successful.

Upon Elle’s birth, she claimed the dog exhibited ‘no interest’ in her and was okay with other people. However, the court heard that Mrs. Doherty called the behaviorist once again in the weeks preceding the incident after she became “concerned” after learning that the dog had “really barked” at her stepmother while she was out having a manicure.

 

“We contacted (the behaviourist) because I didn’t want anything to happen, but he left when we returned from our vacation, so he didn’t get the chance to see Zeus before it happened,” Mrs. Doherty stated.

Zeus was a “big dog, but there was no malice,” according to Mr. Doherty. He claimed that despite the dog’s “loud bark,” he was never hostile toward people.

He claimed that the dog, who was purchased from a Gloucester breeder in October 2020 at the age of eight weeks, got along well with both people and other dogs. “The only thing he didn’t like is if he was surprised by another dog,” he continued. He would bark, but he never bit or did anything else.

He claimed that after they had Elle, Zeus’s behavior remained the same and that the dog would “move out of the way” if the infant occurred to bump into him while she was using her walker.

“It looks like Baby Elle may have leant on Zeus, and that’s when Zeus attacks Baby Elle,” Detective Inspector Anthony Hibbert said to Coventry Coroner Delroy Henry after reviewing the CCTV stills.

There was ‘no element of criminality’ in the incident involving the baby’s parents, he told the court.

Zeus had “no signs of aggression to Baby Elle or indeed the other occupants of the house,” according to Mr. Henry, who gave a narrative conclusion. He claimed that when Baby Elle touched him, the dog was “preoccupied with the contents of the bag.” I believe that Baby Elle’s head was bitten by the dog, and that the puncture wounds resulted in severe hemorrhage and cardiac arrest.

According to him, the “sudden and unanticipated behavior of a large dog in the family home” was the cause of the death.

The hearing today was not attended by Mr. and Mrs. Doherty. Their lives had been “changed forever,” according to Mr. Henry.

Following a string of horrific assaults that left individuals dead or gravely injured, a ban on XL Bully dogs was implemented in February of last year.