‘She's dead, she’s dead, she’s dead’ screamed Kimberley Concannon after she discovered her best friend lying covered in dog bites on the kitchen floor.
Just minutes earlier Jade Lomas-Anderson, 14, and her best friend had been celebrating the start of their Easter holidays.
They had excitedly been planning what they were going to eat for lunch and how they were going to spend the rest of the day.
Family: Jade Lomas-Anderson (right) with her mother Shirley Lomas-Anderson
It was a scene of utter carnage that greeted police officers when they responded to the emergency.
The tragedy happened at lunchtime on Tuesday after Jade slept over at her friend Kimberley’s home in Atherton, near Wigan, to mark the start of their Easter holidays.
The pair had spent the morning together and Kimberley’s mother, Bev Concannon, had gone into town to do some shopping.
At lunch the two school friends went round to a neighbour’s house to ask her to warm some pies up for them in her oven.
Jade is believed to have returned first with her pie and is understood to have gone into the kitchen on her own where she was suddenly set upon by the dogs.
The question of whether it was the smell of the food she was carrying or something else that led to the attack, police say will form part of a complex investigation.
Beware: A sign warning people on the house where Jade was savaged by the dogs
Senior officers say she was jumped on by the dogs and was badly mauled in a frenzied attack. She had bites all over her body, including catastrophic injuries to her neck and throat.
Neighbour Chloe Dewett, 12, said: ‘Kimberley went back into the house with her pie and saw Jade lying there on the floor.
‘She screamed and ran back to the neighbour’s house shouting “She’s dead, She’s dead”. The neighbour called police and they came rushing to the house.’
Desperate attempts were made to save the schoolgirl as she lay on the floor but she died from her injuries.
One of the dogs involved, Buddy, was seen ‘covered in blood’.
A neighbour said: ‘I looked through the back garden fence and the white dog wasn’t white, it was orange. It must have been the blood of the little girl. It was horrible.’
She told how police herded four of the dogs into the back yard before marksmen opened fire and shot them dead.
Michael Reid, 41, said: ‘The police took up positions where they could clearly see the dogs and there were nine shots.
‘The shots rang out across the estate – it was quite an eerie thing. Then Bev returned from her shopping trip.
‘She was totally distraught. She couldn’t believe what had happened. She was screaming in grief for Jade, for her dogs for everything. It was heartbreaking.
‘There was blood all over the back yard. It was absolutely horrific. It is such a shocking tragedy.’
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