Robert Allen

Detroit Free Press

When she saw three pit bulls loose on a Detroit street, a mother walking with her 4-year-old son to a nearby school stopped.

"I said, 'Xavier, don't move,' and we started walking backwards," Lucille Strickland testified in 36th District Court on Wednesday. "I just knew that it was gonna go down. Because when the dogs looked, they just started running straight at us."

She was the fourth witness called in the preliminary examination of Geneke Lyons, 41, who is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and possessing dangerous animals causing death in the death of Xavier Strickland in the yard of Lyons' house on Baylis Street, at the John C. Lodge Freeway. The hearing, in its second day, was continued to Jan. 7.

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Strickland spoke clearly, showing little outward emotion, as she recounted the horrors of what happened at about 12:30 p.m. Dec. 2. She previously told the Free Press that the mauling will forever be cemented in her mind.

She said Wednesday that she and her son tripped and fell as they were backing up, and the dogs converged on them. She fell on top of the boy and was bitten on her leg, back and ear.

"I started kicking and punching them away," she said. "They moved, and I got up a little bit, and I had him in my arm."

But as she tried to pull the small child to safety, the dogs "snatched him from me," dragging him back to their owner's house.

"They pulled him to the fence to the other dog in the fence, and the other dog grabbed his hood on his coat and pulled him under," Strickland said. "And they started biting and eating my son."

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The mother ran to get help. As she started running, she said she could hear Xavier: "Help me, ma! Help me!"

Other witnesses recalled seeing the mother lying in grass, screaming for help. Cherisse Williams on Tuesday testified that she maced a dog in the face before police arrived.

Strickland said Wednesday that she could see the dogs in the yard surrounding her son but she couldn't see him. She heard screaming and gunshots, then she saw an officer carrying Xavier to a patrol car. She ran to the car, which left for the Henry Ford Hospital as another car picked her up to follow her son to the hospital.

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Strickland said her son was intended to go to Children's Hospital of Michigan for emergency surgery. But his heart stopped, and they got it beating again.

Strickland later testified that she's never been scared of dogs or pit bulls before her son was mauled to death. "Now I am," she said.

She also said that the dogs had previously attacked her daughter, taking her book bag.

Also Wednesday, defense attorney Francisco Villarruel asked to have Lyons' $1 million bond lowered. District Court Judge Lydia Nance-Adams decided not to change it.

More witnesses are expected to be called when the case is scheduled to resume at 11 a.m. on Jan. 7.

Contact Robert Allen at rallen@freepress.com or @rallenMI.