Dogs attack and kill boy

A four-year-old boy has been killed by three Rottweilers in a community near Saint John. The dogs attacked James Waddell while he was playing outside his Kingston Peninsula home on Saturday.

RCMP are still trying to find out what happened, and say there were no witnesses to the attack. Police do say the owner of the dogs lived in the same home as Waddell.

After the attack, the dogs were brought to the Animal Rescue Shelter in Saint John where they were put down.

Roxanne Ogden, who runs the centre, says it may be impossible to figure out what happened. "It's really hard to say. We're talking about a very little boy who weighed a lot less than they did," she says.

"The dogs were, I believe, outside. It's really hard to say. They are a guard dog by nature. Whether they knew the little boy or not is hard to say, you know. A dog is a pack animal and things do escalate if something happened. The three or the two of them that were involved could have just gotten together and treated him as another animal, basically."

No charges have been laid in the case, an autopsy took place over the weekend.