Services Tuesday for Pasco tot mauled by dog

Dallas Lee Walters was a fighter, to the end.

Clinging to life at Northbay Hospital after being mauled by a 100-pound Rottweiler, the toddler must have heard his parents telling him they loved him and to keep on fighting. Shortly before he died, the 20-month-old boy raised his arm in the air and made a fist.

"He was trying his hardest, and he was just being Dallas," his father, Andrew Walters, said Sunday. "He was very headstrong and never gave up on anything.

"He was a strong kid. He fought really hard."

But the attack took too much fight out of him.

It happened Saturday night, at a birthday party in Moon Lake. The family was in the living room at Dallas' great-aunt's house, at 9615 Jerome Drive, eating barbecue and celebrating his cousin's 18th birthday. Dallas was standing beside the sofa, near the Christmas tree, with his dad on the other side of the tree.

Then Dallas dropped a cookie and reached down to pick it up. The Rottweiler-Labrador mix came out quickly from behind the sofa and, in an instant, was on top of the boy. The dog was supposed to have been chained up in the backyard; somehow, though, it had gotten loose, and the family had opened the door to let in some air.

"I couldn't even see my kid," said Walters, 26, who pried the dog off his son, with the help of Dallas' great-uncle.

Visitation for Dallas will be from noon to 1 p.m. Tuesday at Dobies Funeral Home, 9944 Hudson Ave., Hudson. Funeral services will begin at 1 p.m., followed by burial at Grace Memorial Gardens, 17007 U.S. 19, Hudson.

Exactly what will happen to the dog is unclear. Pasco County Animal Control took possession of the dog and will make the call. In such cases, where an animal attacks without provocation and kills someone, it's typically euthanized.

There's also a puppy living at the house - offspring of the dog that attacked Dallas, Walters said.

As of Sunday night, authorities hadn't filed any criminal charges.

"It looks like a tragic accident," said Pasco County Sheriff's Office spokesman Kevin Doll. "We're still investigating."

A day after he died, Dallas' home on Edison Avenue was empty. Children's toys sat idle on the porch - a plastic lawn mower, an infant walker, plastic buckets and shovels.

Neighbors in the Griffin Park neighborhood said they used to see Walters and Dallas' mother, Jessica Stafford, in the yard often, playing with the boy and his 6-month-old brother, Dallyn. At night, they'd go for walks; in the summer, they'd played in a kiddie pool.

Dallas was protective of his little brother, his dad said. He liked to fix up his blanket when he fussed and hold his hand.

"He was the best kid," Walters said. "There was no measure of life on this planet that added up to his. He was amazing. I couldn't ask for a better son."

Dallas was typical for his age, and was known to play with a rubber ball in the house - sometimes bouncing it off his father's head - and to mess with the knickknacks.

But he also had a keen sense of order - like his mother, Walters said. He liked shoes to be in their proper place, picked up dirty plates and put them in the sink and would carry dirty diapers - his own or his brother's - to the trash.

"He had more personality than this world," Walters said. "He had more personality than anybody claiming to be a personality on television.

"He's destined for greatness, either in this life or the next."