A 7-year-old boy died after he was apparently attacked by two pit bulls along a road, and deputies summoned to the scene had to shoot the dogs before they could reach him, authorities said. A driver saw Tanner Joshua Monk lying beside a road near Breckenridge on Sunday with two dogs nearby, Stephens County Sheriff Jim Reeves said. She got out of the car to help him, but the dogs became aggressive so she called 911, he said. Two sheriff's deputies who came to the scene shot the dogs to death when they also became aggressive toward them. The deputies found that Tanner was dead, Reeves said in Monday's edition of the Abilene Reporter-News.

The two pit bulls, along with two others seized by law enforcement, belonged to a neighbor of the child's family, Reeves said.

No one was arrested Sunday. Reeves said evidence probably will be presented to a grand jury following an autopsy on the boy and tests on the dogs that were killed. Apparently no one saw what happened on the road north of Breckenridge, about 55 miles northeast of Abilene, he said.

It was the second serious pit bull attack on a child in four days in Texas.

On Wednesday in Fort Worth, a woman's two pit bulls attacked her 2-year-old niece as she was preparing to give the child a bath, police said. The little girl was critically injured, and her aunt also was injured as she lay over the child trying to protect her, police said.

Animal control officers later euthanized the dogs.

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