Brooklyn Park police investigate 2 dog attacks in less than 1 week

BROOKLYN PARK, Minn. (FOX 9) - Yamah Yekeku still has teeth marks and scratches from a dog attack on Tuesday night, but her emotional scars are harder to see.

"It was just so scary. Last night, it was a little bit difficult, but now she is trying," Yamah's mother, Mary Innis, told FOX 9.

Neighbors say the 7-year-old was playing outside her home with a couple of friends when a pit bull started attacking her.

Bystanders separated the two, but while police tried to catch the animal, it tried to attack another child, and an officer shot and killed the dog.

"I'm sad the kids had to go through this traumatic event and how do we recover from that," said neighbor Charlena Davis.

Brooklyn Park police say late last week, a pair of pit bulls mauled a toddler who was visiting a home on the other side of town, prompting officers to shoot and kill one of the animals and injure the other.

The attack left the 3-year-old in critical condition at Hennepin County Medical Center, along with his mother who was seriously injured while trying to intervene.

"It was extremely vicious and there were comments being made by officers that they'd never seen something so horrific before," said Elliot Faust, Public Information Officer for the Brooklyn Park Police Department.

Police say so far this year, Brooklyn Park has already exceeded the number of dangerous dog designations that it had all last year.

They say it's the responsibility of dog owners to control their pets at all times.

"We do investigate dog bites but to have two back-to-back and the kind of dramatic circumstances surrounding them has given us some pause and caused us to kind of reflect on what might be going on here," said Faust.

No criminal charges have been filed in either attack.