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LENOIR, NC – “He was just, just the joy of my life. I just loved that little boy, just so much. It just hurts, hurts so bad,” says Ervin Patterson.
The grandfather is getting comfort from family and friends after his grandson’s sudden death. “He was just learning to talk, just sayin’ paw-paw, and everything,” Patterson says.
Fourteen-month-old Nyhiem Wilfong was playing outside the family home on Early Place near Kings Creek Sunday night. Family members say the boy and his six-year-old brother must have wandered away from a swing set and towards Kobe, a rottweiler chained behind the house.
“The six-year-old he come in the house and hollered, paw-paw, the dog got the baby!” says the boy’s great grandmother Shirley Patterson. She says family members tried to help him, but it was too late. “And Lord, he just looked a mess, with all the grass and the blood, and everything on him, it just got to me,” she says.
Animal Control took Kobe. The dog had only been with the family for a few weeks. The dog will remain at the Caldwell County Animal Shelter until the investigation is complete. The head of Animal Control says it’s likely the dog will be euthanized.
“He’s a very playful dog. He wasn’t no vicious dog. And evidently he must have gotten too close to him,” Shirley Patterson says.
For now, family members are just trying to come to terms with what happened. “I just miss him and stuff so much, I miss that little boy so much, he meant the world to me,” his grandfather says.
If the dog lives and the family wants it back, he will get dangerous dog status. He will have to be nutered, micro-chipped, and kept in a 10-by-10 locked pen–with a concrete floor and metal roof.
