City officials vow to investigate dog attack in south Edmonton that killed 11-year-old boy

City officials are promising to investigate how two dogs were allowed to remain in a south Edmonton home where an 11-year-old boy was killed Monday, after previous dog attacks at the home were reported to animal control officers.

Mayor Amarjeet Sohi condemned the owner of the dogs at a news conference Wednesday.

“I think we all expect that when people take on the responsibility of having pets in their private homes that they will live up to the expectations that are in the licensing bylaw and that they be responsible pet owners,” Sohi said. “And in this case I don't know what happened but the outcome is very tragic.”

Officers responded to a report of a dog attack at a home in the area of 82nd Street and 11th Avenue S.W. on Monday night, police said in a news release. 

Officers found a severely injured boy who “had been attacked by two very large dog,” the news release said. The boy had been attacked inside the home, said police spokesperson Cheryl Voordenhout. 

The child, from Osoyoos, British Columbia, was declared dead on scene. The boy was a Grade 5 student at Osoyoos Elementary School, said Marcus Toneatto, superintendent of schools with School District No. 53 (Okanagan Similkameen).

“A young person being killed. It's just unbelievable, unimaginable, you just can't imagine the pain and the suffering and anxiety the family is going through,” Sohi said.

Police said the child was visiting a home in the Summerside neighbourhood and that the dogs belong to a person who lives at the home. 

The home had been visited twice previously this year by Animal Control peace officers investigating other complaints of dog attacks.

The dogs were seized by Animal Control peace officers and are currently at the Animal Care and Control Centre.

Sohi pledged that the city will review the number of calls that were made to bylaw officers and look at whether there were any gaps. 

“I don't know if there were gaps in the response, but it's so tragic,” Sohi said. “It is so tragic that a young boy has lost his life in these circumstances and my heart goes out to his family.”

Legal duty to supervise

Peter Sankoff, a professor at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law, said the owner has a duty to supervise dangerous animals, or animals with the potential to be dangerous, at all times.

“They're always under that obligation and where something goes wrong, if their failure to exercise that control was of a severe nature, which makes it criminally negligent, then they can be held liable for that,” Sankoff said.

Brian Pasmore, an aggressive dog expert, said there can be a number of causal factors that would make a dog aggressive. 

“But a lot of it is anxiety based and that can be exacerbated by a dog with excess energy that hasn't been trained, isn't maybe getting the leadership that they need on a day-to-day basis, so there can be a variety of causal factors, but anxiety is the big one,” he said.

Incidents of aggression are usually not one-offs, Pasmore said. 

“It's not something that you know where a dog is social and well-behaved one day and you know is triggered in some kind of aggressive manner the next,” he said. “So usually there's a pattern of behaviour that's built up over time.”