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One tough little cookie

Four-year-old boy is in playful mood as he is transferred out of ICU while recovering from attack by dogs

BY BRANDON BAIN | Newsday Staff Writer

May 2, 2006

Matthew Henriques was in good spirits, watching DVD movies and playing with his parents hours after being transferred out of intensive care at Nassau University Medical Center.

Three days after being mauled by three dogs, Matthew was in a pediatric ward room yesterday, surrounded by relatives, chocolate chip cookies, candy, and animated films.

"We'll save this for later," Matthew, 4, told his father, giving him Eskimo kisses as he tied up a bag of Skittles candies. Though he was upbeat, his parents said they are concerned about what will come next.

After being attacked by the dogs, the East Meadow boy may need additional cosmetic surgery for his ears and his cheek, the family's attorney, Giancarlo Terilli, said, adding he did not know when the boy would be released from the hospital.

"Whenever you speak with him, he talks about the dogs," said Terilli, who hinted that the boy might need help for psychological trauma.

During a news conference at the hospital, Matthew's mother, Carina Henriques, broke down several times as she described rushing up from the basement laundry room on Friday afternoon, to see her father-in-law wrestling with two rottweilers and a bulldog that attacked her son in her kitchen.

"I kept trying to keep the dogs off. ... I couldn't do it," she said, sitting near her husband, Louis Henriques. She said she repeatedly punched the dogs and tried to pry their jaws open, to no avail. "I started yelling, 'God help me,'" she said.

Her father-in-law, who was hospitalized on Friday for chest pains and later released, eventually chased the dogs out of the house with a garden hose.

"He was sitting against the wall; his cheek and ear were hanging," Carina Henriques said of her son. "He just looked at me like he didn't know what just happened."

Matthew suffered a gashed cheek and a torn ear, which was reattached by Dr. Sandra Sacks of the Long Island Plastic Surgical Group in Garden City, as well as multiple wounds to his torso, buttocks, back, legs and face.

Lawrence Kelly, 25, the owner of the three dogs, was arrested and released on $250 bail and an appearance ticket on Sunday. A resident at Kelly's home in East Meadow said yesterday the owner was not at home and refused to comment further.

The fate of the three dogs, all facing possible euthanization, could be determined Thursday following a hearing at district court in Hempstead. Carina Henriques and her father-in-law said they may testify. The dogs are being held at an animal control unit.

"I think he should go to jail," Carina Henriques said of the dog's owner. "He's [Matthew is] paying for someone else's recklessness."