Mauled Boy Was To Be Moved

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Jan 13, 2009 6:00PM

More tragic news in the case of Alex Angulo, the four-year-old boy fatally mauled Sunday afternoon. It seems Angulo was scheduled to be moved to another home to live with a family who might have eventually adopted him.

Alex Angulo had lived with his foster family in the 3800 block of West 61st Street since 2007, said Public Guardian Robert Harris. The plan was to move Alex — who was not related to anyone in the home — as early as Thursday to a "pre-adoptive foster home," Harris said. "They had found one, and he was supposed to be moving." He already had five transitional visits with his new foster family. A recent hearing found his current placement was not a good permanent solution because his foster mother was 77, court records show.

A caseworker acknowledged that the dogs were known to DCFS but that there had been no cause for any concerns over Alex's safety. Kendall Marlowe, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, said, "There was an understanding that the dogs lived outside, and the child would not have unsupervised contact with the dogs." Cook County Public Guardian Robert Harris, however, did not agree: "Don't place a 4-year-old in a home with two big wild dogs. You don't just say, 'OK, the kid won't go out into the yard.' I don't know if you can always promise that with a 4-year-old."

Image of the house Angulo lived in taken from AP video