Two dogs attack, injure boy in Tucumcari

Two dogs in a Tucumcari north-side neighborhood attacked and injured a boy last week, requiring hospitalization. A woman who was running to aid the boy fell and broke her wrist.

According to reports by Tucumcari police officer Reyes Gonzales and animal-control officer Mike Martinez, the attack occurred near North Side Park in Tucumcari the morning of Aug. 6. Both reports identified the dogs as pit bulls.

Gonzales went to Trigg Memorial Hospital, where the boy was being treated for his injuries, after hearing about the dog attack from Martinez. He talked to the boy in his hospital bed.

“Two dogs attacked him and he was yelling for help,” Gonzales wrote. “He told me nobody came. He told me he continued to yell while the dogs were dragging him. A man finally arrived and helped him.

“While I was at Trigg ER I was approached by Jimmy Borquez,” Gonzales wrote. “(H)e told me he and his wife heard (the boy) yelling for help and they saw the dogs attacking him. The took off running and Elmira fell and broke her arm.”

Martinez said in his report Gregory Garcia told him “he was on his way home and he saw the dogs dragging a kid. He stopped, yelled at the dogs and one released the child,” Martinez wrote. Garcia got the other dog to release the child, and he took him to the hospital.

Gonzales reported the boy had two tears on the front of his leg and a large tear on the back of his leg, plus another 2-inch, open bite mark on his inner right thigh.

Gonzales issued a citation to the dogs' owner, Jeffrey C. Clark of Tucumcari, for animals at large. He surrendered the dogs to the city's animal-control unit.

Robert Pacheco, who didn't see the dog attack but lives in the neighborhood and heard about it from the Borquezes, said the people who came to the child's aid were heroes.

“People should know what these people did,” Pacheco said. “I'm very proud to know them as my neighbors.”