Child Dies From Wild Dogs’ Attack

An eight-year-old boy, Tomas Jay Henio, was attacked and killed by nine feral dogs on Wednesday, Dec. 26.A representative from the Ramah Navajo Police Department confirmed the incident. According to the Cibola County Sheriff’s Office, Henio went outside and minutes later his mom went to check on him only find her child face down, unresponsive, with bite marks on his body. The Albuquerque Journal reported this past weekend that Henio was the oldest of four children. All nine dogs were captured on Thursday, Dec. 27, by two county sheriff animal control officers and were delivered to an official at the Grants Animal Care Center at approximately 6 p.m. They were all euthanized that evening, according to Mace. The incident was on Navajo Nation land and the Gallup FBI office, according to Ramah Navajo Police Department Sgt. Delvin Maria, is now handling the case. Feral dogs in Cibola County are a problem. In 2011 Kevin Gleason, Navajo Nation wildlife and animal control manager, reported that there were four-to-five dogs for each of the more than 89,000 households – or as many as 445,000 dogs, most of which roam unchecked, killing livestock and biting people with alarming regularity. There are several parts of Cibola County that belong to the Navajo Nation. One part is the Pinehill area, where the incident took place last week. In Pinehill, stray dogs roam the sides of highways, store parking lots and just about anywhere they find food. “They [feral dogs] kill everything,” Gleason was reported saying by the Associated Press in a Colorado newspaper. “Cats, dogs, cattle, sheep, horses… We just had a case where a man lost 37 sheep to a pack of dogs.” Officers responded to more than 25 bite cases a month, said Gleason. And, 25 livestock damage cases a month. Feral dogs mauled a 55-year-old man in 2011 after he fell down from a seizure. Following the incident, Gleason said, his department went in and removed 79 dogs [from the area where the man was killed]. “And it looked like we never touched it,” he added...more