A married lesbian couple from Texas have been arrested in the death of their toddler son, who was mauled by their starving family dogs this summer.
Brittany Brooks, 27, and her wife, 29-year-old Ashley Brooks, were taken into custody on Friday, charged with second-degree injury to a child. They were being held in jail on $75,000 bond each,
On July 27, police officers responded to the women’s home in the 9100 block of Morella Road in El Paso and found their four-year-old son, Jacob Brooks, lying unresponsive in the backyard, having been mauled to death by four dogs.
Couple charged: Ashley Brooks (left), 29, and her wife Brittany Brooks (right), 27, have been arrested in Texas and charged with injury to a child in the mauling death of their toddler son
Victim: The Brookses’ son, four-year-old Jacob Brooks, died on July 27 after being attacked by four dogs in his backyard
The boy was playing on this enclosed trampoline when the dogs, led by a mixed-breed dog named Memphis, lunged at him
A neighbor told El Paso Times at the time that the family kept as many as 10 dogs of various sizes and breeds, including pit bulls and German shepherds.
On the day of the mauling, police said one of the young mothers had left her son to play in an enclosed trampoline in the backyard.
‘They practically ate him,’ Ramon Payan, the family’s neighbor, said of the dogs.
In all, six animals were removed by Animal Control officers from the couple’s home, and four of them were eventually euthanized.
Court documents obtained by the station KVIA indicated that a mixed-breed dog named Memphis was the ‘instigator’ of the mauling, and a German shepherd mix dubbed Helga was also deemed aggressive.
Police officers responded to the women’s home in the 9100 block of Morella Road in El Paso (pictured) and came upon Jacob’s body
Speaking of the mauling, a neighbor said the dogs ‘practically ate him.’ Jacob is pictured with his grandmother left and right
Jacob’s aunt previously claimed the family pets had no history of aggression and that the mauling was an accident
According to the documents, both dogs appeared to be malnourished, with their ribs visible through their skins, and were not sociable.
‘I understand they didn’t feed the dogs, ’cause they’d be crying all night,’ neighbor Silverio Murillo told the channel KFOX14.
In a written statement released to the news site KVIA, Jacob’s aunt Laura Torguson claimed the family pets had no history of aggression and insisted that what happened to the ‘beautiful, kind, intelligent’ child was an accident that could have happened to anyone.