Neighbour's Akita dog that savaged young girl cannot be put down

Four-year-old Charlotte Cort-Levin was playing with her two-year-old next door neighbour at their home in Sheffield when she was bitten by the neighbour's Japanese Akita.

She has cuts on her forehead and above her eyebrow, as well as puncture marks below her eye, on her cheek and under her chin. Charlotte's mother Katie Levin, 25, said: "I turned my back for a split second. I heard a bark and a child scream. She was on their back garden and as the dog lunged for her they ended up on ours."

Charlotte, a reception class pupil at Carfield Primary School, was in Sheffield Children's Hospital for two days.

Miss Levin, who lives in Valley Road, Meersbrook, said: "The surgeons did a brilliant job. The scars are all red lines now.

"The police said they can't do anything about it. It's not classed as a crime as it was in a private garden. The dog can't be put down. But if a dog bites a child it doesn't matter where it is – it's still vicious, it's still bitten a child."