For grandpa, dog attack is a story about hope

Her grandfather calls her Happy. She could always be found with a smile on her face and a song on her lips.

Not now.

Eleven days ago, two pit bulls slammed the little 6-year-old to the sidewalk and tore at her face. Before the dogs were killed by responding Cincinnati Police officers, they had severed Zainabou Drame's tongue.

The Roll Hill Academy kindergartner remains in critical condition in a medically induced coma at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. One week after the June 4 attack, which occurred four doors from her home on Westwood's Aquadale Lane, doctors began what family members have been told could amount to a four-year series of reconstructive surgeries.

So, for now, she is not singing or smiling.

Someday she will be, insists her grandpa, Leslie McElrath Jr. He maintains she will recover because this is not a story of hopelessness. This is a story of hope.

"What happened to Zaina is not about dividing people, attacking someone, putting someone in jail, banning pit bulls or killing dogs," said McElrath, a 65-year-old lab technician. He sat in the dining room of the home on Aquadale he shares with Jacqueline, his wife of 30 years, plus Zainabou, her three siblings and their parents.

"This is an opportunity to come together," he continued, "to show the city how much people care, to help heal a little girl."

He knows his response sounds, as he put it, "a little off the hook."

More than once, he's been told: "You're crazy."

And he's replied: "I'm sad. But I'm not angry. I'm quiet because I'm praying to God to take care of her."

He stood up from his dining room table and moved a vase filled with daisies and mums. The flowers came from a church prayer service for Zainabou's recovery.

McElrath slowly traced his finger over the words on his T-shirt. The words, under a smiling sun, declare: "I am Zainabou's voice."

"Her father comes from Senegal," he explained. "That's where her first name comes from."

Again, his index finger traced the words: "I am Zainabou's voice."

That he is. For now.

But not, he believes in his heart, forever.

"They may be able to reattach her tongue someday," he said, "or grow a new one. You can't believe the stuff modern medicine does."

So, until then, he will speak for his granddaughter and her mother, Tanina Drame, the third of his six daughters.

"Her mother," he whispered, not wanting to upset his wife, who suffers from muscular dystrophy, "is still in shock over what happened that day."

As he started to talk about "that day," he wept.

He was on his way home from work. He heard gunfire and saw police cars. "Good!" he told himself. "They're taking care of the drug dealers in the area."

Minutes later he learned that the gunfire might have saved his granddaughter's life.

Zainabou had been playing tag with some neighborhood kids. "She came into the house to get a drink and cool off," McElrath said. "She told my daughter she was going to stay inside. Then a little girl knocked on the door and asked if Zaina could come out and play. Out she went."

He closed his eyes and slowly shook his head. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he bit his lips.

"Then it happened. Two big pit bulls got out from a broken fence up the street. I didn't know the guy who lived there. Never knew his name. Only knew him to wave to. I never saw the bigger of the two pit bulls until that day when he was laying up against a wall, dead."

Two blood-stained sections of concrete sidewalk still mark the spots where the attack took place. One stain runs from the sidewalk down a driveway apron and into the street. The other casts its rust-red tinge by a fence post. Both are grim reminders of what can happen when vicious dogs encounter kids playing tag.

The dogs belonged to Zontae Irby. After a search of his house at 2973 Aquadale following the attack, the 24-year-old was arrested on weapon, drug and receiving stolen property charges. Any charges stemming from the attack have yet to be filed, but Irby was indicted Friday by a Hamilton County grand jury with trafficking in marijuana, possession of marijuana and receiving stolen property when a stolen gun was discovered in the home. Those charges carry a maximum sentence of 8 1/2 years in prison. His mother, Volores White, also was indicted, for permitting drug abuse. All are felonies.

This is not the first crime to be associated with 2973 Aquadale. That's the home address of Dierres Lee, who pleaded guilty in May to the February 2013 killing of La Salle student Justin Brown during a botched drug deal. The talk on the street has long been that no one was comfortable with who lived there or what went on in the one-story house with the heavy-duty barred frame on the front screen door.

"The pit bulls got Zaina because she was the smallest of the kids, like the jackals do with the herds on 'Wild Kingdom,'" McElrath said. "One dog grabbed her face and literally tore it off. The other one pulled her mouth off. That hurt her tear duct. They've fixed that, and they reattached her face. (The dogs) broke her jaw, too. The doctors worked on that. They repaired her chin and changed the trach tube in her esophagus."

As for her tongue, "they had to take that," he said and shivered. But he still believes she will speak again.

"I'm a Christian," he said. "I believe in my heart things will be better. That's why she is still alive and why she is going to make it."

He noted three contributing factors to his granddaughter's survival: His dog, Cappuccino. His daughter, Tanina. And Cincinnati Police Officer Josh Bricker.

"My dog only weighs 20 pounds. But he went after one of those pit bulls to save my little girl," McElrath said. "That's why I now call him, 'Captain Bite Bite.'"

His daughter "grabbed my baseball bat, ran out of the house and clubbed those two dogs with it." He reached over and picked up the well-worn aluminum bat. He used it when he coached Knothole teams. One of his former players is Hall-of-Famer Barry Larkin.

McElrath swears Zainabou is alive "because of the biggest of the cops who came to her rescue. After they shot the dogs, he cleared her esophagus. Otherwise she would have drowned in her own blood."

He wants "to thank that officer. I gave one of the other cops a hug and told him that was for the big guy." That would be Bricker. "I want him to know how thankful I am. He saved her life."

He sighed and sank into his chair. Wiping his eyes, he explained how his faith has helped him maintain his composure and prevented him from seeking revenge.

"I am a man of the scriptures," he said. Quoting the Bible, he declared: "The angry man does not achieve the righteousness of God." That's why he has "already forgiven the man who owns the dogs."

Nor does he intend to condemn his neighborhood. "Yes," he admitted, "it has changed over the 15 years we have lived here. When we moved in, there were lots of cops and firemen here. The street was predominately Caucasian.

"Now there are more black people," said the man who describes himself as a "Cherokee, Ethiopian Irishman."

He maintained, however, "there are still lots of good people on the street. Look how they tried to help Zaina."

Aquadale and its adjoining streets belong to a housing development built in the early 1960s. Most of the homes are compact, ranch-style structures with the same floor plan. The section on the left covers the combination living, dining and kitchen areas. A narrow hallway joins the space on the left with a bathroom and two bedrooms on the right.

Some of these Kennedy-era houses feature immaculately maintained yards, where it's 1962 all over again. Others sport boarded-up windows and knee-high stands of grass and weeds. Welcome to 2014.

Dennis and Linda Meyer have lived on Aquadale for 40 years. Their house is across the street from the scene of the attack on Zainabou. Linda Meyer phoned in the first report to 911. Dennis Meyer acknowledged the street's changing demographics, "but then again," he said, "what neighborhood in Cincinnati hasn't changed in the last 40 years?"

When asked if other pit bulls live on the street, he nodded toward the sidewalk. A man was walking two dogs up Aquadale. Both were straining at their leashes. Both were pit bulls.

Meyer looked back and said: "Does that answer your question?"

McElrath has no plans to join any movement to ban pit bulls or increase the penalties for the owners of vicious dogs. He's heard rumblings about that from members of City Council.

"They can do what they want with that," he said.

He has bigger plans. He must put his house in order and get his front yard looking especially nice "for the day when Zaina comes home to seven people who love her.

"I know," he added, "she's going to come back into my house some day."

He's sure of it, because this is a story of hope. ■

Third dog at SPCA

Cincinnati Police officers shot and killed both pit bulls involved in the June 4 attack on 6-year-old Zainabou Drame. An SPCA Cincinnati officer removed a third dog of the same breed from the Westwood house where the dead dogs lived. That animal remains under observation at SPCA's Northside location.

The white and tan, 40-pound, 2-year-old pit bull meekly looked at his first two visitors as it entered holding pen No. 14. He moved his head toward the door in the same, slow, animatronics fashion pit bulls exhibit. The other pit bulls in the kennel – they make up 40 percent of SPCA's population – barked continuously. This unnamed dog did not make a sound.

"My staff reports he is shy and nervous and timid," Mike Retzlaff, SPCA director of operations, said of the third dog from 2973 Aquadale Lane. "He has exhibited no signs of aggression."

Cincinnati repealed its pit bull ban in 2012.