U.K. : 4‑year-old girl dies after being attacked by dog in Milton Keynes backyard

A four-year-old girl has died after being attacked by a dog in Mil­ton Keynes, police have launched an investigation.

Just after 5pm on Tues­day, police rushed to the scene after receiv­ing a call that a dog was attack­ing a girl in the back­yard of a prop­er­ty in Nether­field­’s Broadlands.

Police con­firmed the child died at the scene and the dog was dis­posed of.

Her fam­i­ly is sup­port­ed by spe­cial­ly trained police officers.

As the inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues, no arrests have been made in con­nec­tion with the investigation.

Detec­tive Matt Bul­li­vant describes the inci­dent as “trag­ic.”

“This is a tru­ly trag­ic inci­dent where a child is believed to have died after being attacked by a dog.

“It is wrong and unhelp­ful to spec­u­late as to the exact cir­cum­stances of this incident.

“How­ev­er, in the inter­est of pub­lic safe­ty, we made the deci­sion this after­noon to dis­pose of the dog involved and have done so in a humane manner.

“We under­stand the impact of this inci­dent on the com­mu­ni­ty and the pub­lic and expect a large police pres­ence in the area as the inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues tonight and beyond.

“Right now, we don’t believe the pub­lic will be at risk, so please rest assured.

“How­ev­er, we ask that spec­u­la­tion not be used to describe the sit­u­a­tion, espe­cial­ly on social media.

“I can’t imag­ine what they (the fam­i­ly) are think­ing right now.

“More infor­ma­tion will be pro­vid­ed when available.”