The puppy who chewed off the face of a Queens baby girl who had just died in her parents bed was going to be trained as a service dog for the baby’s non-verbal autistic stepbrother, the heartbroken parents said Thursday.
The mother and stepdad of 6-week-old Kiyanna Winfield say she was born with a heart murmur. They believe she died of natural causes — and that the puppy, named Bella, who then chewed half her face off was trying to help.
The infant was sleeping between her mother, Lillian Burton, and stepdad when the parents awoke at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday to the disturbance in their bed in NYCHA’s Queensbridge North Houses in Long Island City.
“I just saw her face gone so I started screaming,” Burton said Thursday of her baby daughter. “I couldn’t get up. I was just crawling around on the floor. My legs went dead from seeing all of that.”
“The only thing visible was right here,” added Burton, pointing to her eyes as she describes her daughter’s injuries from the pit bull-mix pup. “From the nose to here, everything gone.”
An initial autopsy by the city Medical Examiner was inconclusive with further study needed to determine the baby’s cause of death. But the autopsy did find that the girl was already dead when bitten by the dog.
Cops suspected the dog killed the baby until the autopsy showed otherwise. It may be months before the official cause of death is known.
“The additional testing includes a full pediatric workup and is expected to take at least several weeks before a final determination can be made,” a spokeswoman for the city Medical Examiner said Thursday of the autopsy. “As for the nature of the facial injuries, they are postmortem. We will decline to offer more details.”
One of the avenues of inquiry is that the baby may have died of natural causes, a source said. Kiyanna was born with a hole in her heart, according to her parents.
Burton said she fed Kiyanna just before the family went to sleep around midnight. “(My children are) well fed, well changed, well put together,” she said.
The infant then somehow died in the apartment on 12th St. near 41st Ave.
“When we woke up to see the dog doing what it was doing, the first thing we automatically assumed was, alright, the dog did this,” said the stepfather, who declined to give his name. “All we knew was that our baby was alive when we went to sleep.”
“We don’t think the puppy was purposefully hurting our child,” the stepfather added. “The dog was so young that it didn’t understand what it was doing.”
The parents think the puppy may have even been trying to help the baby.
“It only targeted the mouth and the nose,” the stepfather said of Bella. “We think maybe the baby was gasping for air … so the puppy was trying to clear whatever was on her face for her to breathe.
Colin Mixson / New York Daily News
Workers with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner wheeling a gurney out a building in the Queensbridge Houses where a 1-month-old girl died Tuesday morning. (Colin Mixson / New York Daily News)
Bella was removed from the home and brought to Animal Care Centers of New York City, where she is on a 10-day rabies observation hold.
The stepdad got Bella, who is 6 weeks old, just two weeks ago and wanted to train her to be a service animal for his non-verbal autistic 2-year-old son.
The parents were trying to regain access to the apartment Thursday but police turned them away.
Burton’s adoptive mother told The News on Tuesday she had offered to take the newborn in while Burton, who was living in a shelter at the time, worked to secure better housing.
She was stunned that the couple allowed Bella to get so close to the infant.
“How could they have a dog with a baby?” the adoptive mother asked. “The dog shouldn’t be in the house.”
With Rocco Parascandola
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