DETROIT – A 10-year-old boy was rushed to a hospital after he was mauled by a dog on Detroit's west side Saturday.
Daran Stewart was playing in his backyard when a neighbor's pit bull managed to get underneath the fence and into the yard.
"That's just a parent's worst nightmare -- a child being hurt mauled, or anything happening to them," the boy's father, Randy Stewart, said.
Randy Stewart was in the house resting when the boy was attacked.
"I heard my boy screaming, (so I) grabbed my son to bring him in the house," Randy said.
He wrapped his son's wound and rushed him to the hospital.
"It's like a feeling of helplessness," he said.
His aunt, Shaakira Stewart, knew something was wrong from commotion out back.
"I was inside and I heard a lot of rumbling and hollering, and I said, 'What are they doing? Are they fighting?' I come down here, he's like screaming, 'The dog got me. The dog bit me,'" Shaakira Stewart said.
The dog belongs to the neighbor. The pit bull managed to slip through a crack underneath the fence. It bit down on Daran's leg.
As Daran screamed for help, the boys on the other side of the fence tried pulling their dog back.
"You know when pit bulls bite down they lock, so when they were pulling him, he ripped a big chunk out of his leg," Stewart said.
Daran's father didn't wait for an ambulance. He rushed him from the house on Lindsay Street, just off Puritan Street, to Sinai-Grace Hospital, where they transported the boy to Children's Hospital of Michigan due to the severity of the injuries.
Randy Stewart said the part that bothers him the most is that he had concerns about the dog before the incident.
"I (had) seen the dog before, and it always seemed like every time it was barking at us," he said.
But the dog was not taken from the house.
The neighbor told Local 4 News the pit bull has never shown any signs of aggression before. He said when Animal Control comes, he will gladly have the dog put down.
As for Daran, even though he was mauled by the dog, his concerns were about his family, not himself.
"He's telling them to make sure we don't get bit by the dog. He's concerned about us, but that's the way he is. He's a sweetheart," Shaakira Stewart said.
"He told me, 'Don't cry, daddy,' He's a strong boy," Randy Stewart said.
Randy said that while he's glad his son is doing better, he wants his neighbor to realize the situation could have been much worse.
"I just want justice," he said. "I don't know if he was training the dog to be like that, vicious."
Randy said Daran is doing much better physically, but that he's scarred mentally and is afraid to go outside.