"The screams just kept coming and coming: 'Someone help. Someone has to do something,'" recounted Angela Cinti, 20, of Bethel Park, who was visiting the zoo today with her boyfriend Nick Kramer, 16, of Bethel Park.
Ms. Cinti described a horrifying scene that lasted a little more than 5 minutes but seemed like hours.
"We were on our way to the polar bear exhibit when we heard the most horrible piercing screams... Someone was begging for help, asking someone to do something...," she said. The couple ran back in the direction they came from, passing the bear exhibits. The screams continued.
As they reached the painted dog exhibit, she saw a small crowd of distressed onlookers. "One woman with a baby in the stroller was screaming that someone needed to so something," Ms. Cinti said.She said she could see the little boy's apparently lifeless body lying on the hill inside the exhibit. "There were three dogs: one at his head, one on the left side of his neck and another one down by his leg... A [zoo employee]got there and hopped over a fence with a rake and he was banging...trying to distract the dogs but they wouldn't move," she said.
Ms. Cinti, a student at Community College of Allegheny County, tracked the time frame with her cell phone, saying she made a call at 11:49 a.m. when she and her boyfriend first headed toward the commotion. She said her cell phone shows that the call was ended five minutes and five seconds later, when a half-dozen zoo employees arrived and dispersed the crowd.
That must've been horrific to be a witness..jpg/250px-Lycaon_pictus_(Temminck,_1820).jpg)
