[chris]

A 10-year-old boy was mauled by three dogs after stepping off his school bus in Arizona City, Arizona, on the afternoon of Jan. 19, 2011, according to the Pinal County Sheriff's Office and local news reports. The boy, identified by relatives and reporters as Jason Hamilton, a fourth-grader at Toltec Elementary School, lost an ear and was bitten across his face, neck, torso, shoulder and legs.

Hamilton had just gotten off the bus with his 5-year-old brother and two other children when he stopped to tie his shoe, family members told the Arizona Daily Star. As the dogs came at the group, he told the younger children to keep moving and backed away while trying to wave the animals off. Animal-control officers described the dogs as a Rottweiler and two pit bulls. They knocked the boy to the ground and attacked.

A caller reported the attack to 911 as it was happening, and a recording of that call was later posted on a website for emergency dispatchers. Neighbors ran out with baseball bats and a chair to beat the dogs back. Allen Rogers, who lived nearby, told reporters he hit one of the animals with a bat. "I hit him full force in the head," Rogers said. "I thought I killed him."

Emergency crews airlifted Hamilton to Phoenix Children's Hospital, where he underwent nearly three hours of surgery. Relatives said doctors expected him to stay in the hospital for about a week and that reconstructive work on his face and ear would be put off for six months to a year. "From head to toe he has bite marks," the boy's mother's fiance told the Star.

Pinal County Animal Control seized all three dogs, two of them at a nearby home where the animals had fled after the attack. The Pinal County Sheriff's Office opened an investigation. Officials said at the time that any decision on charges against the dogs' owner, or on euthanizing the animals, would depend on the outcome of that inquiry.