KENNETH HANSEN, 46, was working late one May evening two years ago, putting the last pieces of siding on a home in Gratiot County, Michigan. He glanced up from his saw to see his brother frantically waving his arms. Then he heard screaming. Standing on the back porch of the home next door was a little boy yelling “Help!” while four rottweilers growled, barked, and snarled in a circle below him.

At first, Hansen thought it was just a dogfight. Then alarm bells went off in his head. “The noises they made sounded like what dogs do when they’re killing something,” he says. His hunch proved right when another young boy suddenly popped up in the middle of the dogs, and Hansen watched in horror as they sank in their teeth and flung him across the grass like a small doll.

“That’s when I realized he wasn’t wearing a red-and-white shirt like I’d thought,” says Hansen. “He was shirtless and covered in blood, and those dogs were trying to kill him.”