Dog to be destroyed after child loses fingertip in Gateshead Published duration 11 December 2019

A couple's dog is to be destroyed after it bit the tip off of a four-year-old boy's finger.

The Staffordshire bull terrier attacked the child as he lay colouring in at a house in Gateshead in December 2018.

Its owners Ryan Baker, 24, and Kelsey Forster, 23, admitted owning a dangerously out of control dog at Carlisle Crown Court.

They were given 20-month prison sentences suspended for a year. The dog was also ordered to be destroyed.

The attack happened when Baker and Forster, of Speckled Wood Drive, Carlisle, were at a family get-together.

The hearing was told how the dog at first sniffed the child's hand and licked his face, before sinking its teeth into the back of his head.

'Why did it bite me?'

Blood was seen "streaming" from puncture wounds and the tip of one finger was severed during the attack.

The court heard other people in the room had tried to get the dog off the child.

The boy underwent surgery to have his finger tip grafted back on, but has been left scarred.

Although the couple had reported no prior issues with the dog, they knew it had bitten a toddler and two other dogs while with three previous adoptive owners.

The boy's father said: "My son could have been killed. The defendants knew their dog was a risk to others and knowingly exposed my family to that risk."

He said his son had been left traumatised and said: "Daddy, why did it bite me? I was just sitting drawing."

Jonathan Harley, mitigating, said: "This was an offence borne out of complacency and naivety rather than overt criminality."