New England News

Friday, August 24, 2007

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Police looking for owner of dog after a little girl is bitten by a pit bull

FITCHBURG, Mass. -- While Hannah Cummiskey, 3, was waiting for her bus, a pit bull puppy lunged at her and attacked her.

"The dog just lunged right up and hit her in the face," Thomas Cummiskey, Hannah's father, said.

Cummiskey says that he was sitting on his front steps while he was waiting for his daughters daycare bus to arrive on Wednesday morning. A woman walked past the father and daughter with a nine-month-old pit bull. When Hannah tried to pet the dog, it allegedly bit her in the face.

"Right on her nose," Cummiskey said. "She's got to little puncture marks here, a scratch here, and she's got a small laceration on the inside of her nose."

According to Cummiskey, the woman walked away with the dog before he could ask her if it had been vaccinated for rabies.

Hannah had five rabies shots, however she did not react well.

"She had cold shakes," Cummiskey said. "She was shivering pretty bad. She was running a temperature of 101.7, and she was complain of real bad stomach pains. And, so we had to bring her back to the hospital."

Police asks that they owner of the dog comes forward so they can disseminate whether the dogs shots are up to date.

Hannah's parents say that they do not want to prosecute the owner of the pit bull, however they just want to know what the dogs condition is.

"We just want to find out... if the dog has rabies shots, so my little girl can be safe," Rebecca Cummiskey, Hannah's mother, said.

If the owner of the dog does not come forward, Hannah will have to have four more rabies vaccinations.

The dog is described as a nine-month-old pit bull, brown in color with a black spot on it's nose, and a cut on it's right ear.

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