NYC man who rescued boy from Rottweiler says child and his brothers shouldn’t have been left alone with dog – New York Daily News

To rescue a dying toddler, a frightened Brooklyn man had to go face to face with a vicious killer dog whose violent mission was to keep strangers outside the home he was trained to guard.

Armed with a shovel he found in the hallway and a courage that surprised even him, Dionald Zephir managed to keep the snarling animal at bay while he snatched the bleeding boy away from the determined dog that had savagely attacked the child, left alone with his two young brothers while their father was away at work Tuesday night.

But the damage had already been done. Little Ryan Foster died a short time later.

Zephir, 43, said he was walking along a Flatbush street, tired after a strenuous workout, when two boys hysterically approached him screaming something about a dog in their home trying to kill their baby brother.

“It didn’t really click exactly what they were trying to say in the beginning,” Zephir told the Daily News.

Then it began to make sense.

“‘My brother! The dog is about to eat my brother, kill my brother,” one of the boys yelled. “I said, ‘What?,’” Zephir recalled.

The two kids, Jayden, 11, and Tale, 9, rushed Zephir to the apartment building and over to their front door, which they told him was unlocked. So Zephir pushed it open only to find the Rottweiler and the bloody boy right by the entrance. He didn’t even fully enter the home.

“I see the dog on top of the baby,” he said. “I was kind of scared, myself.”

Zephir looked around for something to defend himself with and scare the Rottweiler away from tiny Ryan. He found a shovel in the hallway and used it as his weapon.

“I scared the dog and the dog moved back” Zephir explained. “Then the dog tried to move closer to me so I used the shovel again and the dog moved back.”

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As soon as he had enough space, Zephir grabbed Ryan by the legs and pulled him out of the apartment and into the hallway.

“I held the baby in my arms,” Zephir said. “The baby was alive. When I took the baby, the baby was breathing.”

The boy was rushed to Maimonides Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The boy’s father, Vernon Foster, 30, was arrested and charged with criminally negligent homicide, manslaughter and acting in a manner injurious to a child. He was held on $50,000 bail after his arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court Thursday.

The boys were visiting their father at the home of his parents, who were out of the country. Foster, who is separated from the kids’ mother, told cops he left the boys at home with the dog while he went to work, authorities said.

“Only a fool would do something like that,” Zephir said.

“The guy should never leave the baby inside the house with the big dogs. Never!” said Zephir, who has three children of his own. “I don’t feel good about it. It’s a little innocent child with a long life to live and it just disappeared.”