Melbourne, Aug 31 (IANS) A 22-month-old girl suffered more than 100 wounds after being mauled by her family pet dog, a doctor told a court in Australia Tuesday.
The injuries of Kara Compton, who died in a hospital four years ago, were described by two senior nurses Tuesday as the most horrific they’ve seen.
Kara was in bed in her home at Bunyip in Victoria’s east when the dingo-cross dog climbed onto her bed and mauled her. She was found by her father and taken to hospital, but went into cardiac arrest and died, Australian news agency AAP reported.
Emergency doctor Jonathan Lee, told a Victorian Coroner’s Court inquest Tuesday that Kara was bitten more than 100 times in the February 2006 attack.
‘(There were) easily over 100 full thickness puncture wounds to this child’s body,’ he said.
Dr Lee said medical staff struggled to get an intravenous line into Kara so they could give her blood. He said Kara went into cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead after about one hour.
Lee said the severity of Kara’s injuries was not initially made clear to him in a call from the ambulance service. But he doubts Kara would have survived even if she had been immediately taken to hospital.
‘By the time she was discovered I think it was already too late,’ he said, adding, ‘You never remember the ones you save, but you always remember the ones you don’t’.
In a statement Kara’s father Stephen Compton told the court that he fell asleep in front of the television and was woken by one of his children tapping him on the shoulder to say Kara, who had Downs Syndrome and a chronic lung disorder, had fallen out of bed.
He said he picked up Kara, who also wore a peg that allowed her to be fed directly into her stomach, and put her back into bed without realising anything was wrong.
A short time later his wife turned on the bedroom light and they saw blood on Kara’s clothes.
‘As we undressed her we could see teeth marks which I straight away realised was from a dog,’ he said.
The inquest before Coroner John Olle continues Wednesday.
