Child attacked by three dogs, calf muscle “torn”

• Liam Martinez, 6, was attacked by a neighbor’s pit bull mix on April 18 in his backyard in Wiggins, Miss
• Five of Tamara Melom’s dogs were previously implicated in several other attacks in Mobile, Alabama, resulting in a court order to remove them from their owner, who allegedly bought them back illegally through third parties on Facebook, she said Wednesday, April 1. May, in court
• Melom will not face criminal charges for the attack, which temporarily impaired Liam’s ability to walk, but she was fined about $3,000 for violating a county ordinance regarding vicious dogs

The Mississippi mother had just gotten home when she heard “a death scream” coming from her backyard.

Devyn Phillips ran toward the sound and wrote in a Facebook post that she saw three pit bull mix dogs “shaking” her 6-year-old son, Liam Martinez, and “eating him alive.”

Phillips’ partner, Aries Fairley, jumped into the fray and “snatched our Liam from those dogs,” the mother wrote, adding that her “fingers slipped into his leg as she held her son.”

“This was an all-out attack and the dogs wouldn’t stop,” Phillips wrote of the April 18 incident in Wiggins, Miss. “They ate my son.”

Liam Martinez, 6, was flown to a hospital in Mobile, Alabama, where doctors performed surgery but were unable to repair his “completely torn” right calf muscle, according to a GoFundMe page set up to cover medical costs.

Family friends said on GoFundMe that Liam suffered “multiple” injuries down to the bone, resulting in severe nerve damage.

“This is a tragedy that should never have happened,” Stone County Chief Deputy Sheriff Steve Taylor said in an interview with PEOPLE.

Taylor says his investigators later learned that Tamatha Melom, the dogs’ owner – who had a history of attacks – had allegedly illegally united with her dogs the year before.

Three previous attacks — including one on an elderly person who received 63 stitches — led to a Mobile, Alabama, judge issuing a court order to take away four of her dogs, Melom told Stone on Wednesday, May 1 County Justice Court admitted in a trial Taylor told PEOPLE.

The dogs were scheduled to be sent to a rescue group in February 2023, but according to Taylor, Melom testified that she paid friends and others on Facebook to buy the dogs back by crossing state lines into Mississippi and settling there with her dogs Street from a local Head Start program for children.

Taylor’s investigators eventually seized five of Melom’s dogs – some of which were involved in Liam’s attack and all of which had previously been microchipped – that were involved in the Mobile attacks.

In court, Melom said she believed her dogs were innocent and had not apologized to the family, Taylor tells PEOPLE. Melom also claimed at the hearing that Mobile animal control made up the earlier attacks.

Melom’s five fighting dogs are scheduled to be euthanized in early June through a lethal injection by a veterinarian, Taylor said. She has 30 days to file an appeal.

Melom — who was not charged criminally and represented herself in court — was fined about $3,000 for five violations of a county ordinance against vicious dogs, Taylor confirms to PEOPLE.

Taylor tells PEOPLE that Melum continues to own several other dogs, including two small dogs with a litter of puppies, as well as a larger dog, “but he doesn’t seem to be vicious.”

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Meanwhile, in an updated statement to PEOPLE, which was also posted on GoFundMe earlier this month, Phillips says Liam is “still a long way away” from being able to walk again, although they’re slowly “building his strength back up” with additional surgeries and physical therapy Get him running again,” but that “he may never be able to play sports in the future.”

Phillips says her son will miss the rest of kindergarten to continue his recovery. At the moment it is difficult for him to use a walking frame.

Liam’s next surgery – planned Wednesday, May 8 – “Any non-viable dead skin/tissue needs to be removed and the current stitches removed,” she says, adding, “Then they will close the rest of his leg.”

Phillips said on Facebook that doctors told her that if Liam hadn’t been rescued so quickly, Liam probably wouldn’t be alive.

“Liam has a long road to recovery ahead of him, but he is here, he is stronger than I could have ever imagined,” she added, “and he is overcoming every obstacle that has been put in his path.”