NC Dog Attack Blamed in Death of Forsyth County Boy

Twenty-five years after a six-year-old North Carolina boy was found strangled to death in the woods behind his house, investigators have concluded that a dog attack was to blame – not the boy’s mother.

According to North Carolina news sources, forensic evidence clearly points to a dog attack in the death of Nicholas Benjamin Loris, a young Forsyth County boy who left his home one day in 1987 to play with a pair of neighborhood dogs. His body was found in the woods later that day – he had died of strangulation and was covered in puncture wounds.

The boy’s mother, Elizabeth Watkins, was a suspect in the death for years – a fact that also ruined her relationship with her 8-year-old son. However, now investigators say that the boy was an obvious victim of a dog attack – and that during the attack, the dogs pulled the boy’s shirt tight against his neck, strangling him.

Investigators said that the evidence clearly pointed to a fatal North Carolina dog attack, but they did not apologize for listing Watkins as a suspect in the death. They explained that strangulation is not a common cause of death in a dog attack and that the last 25 years had allowed better evidence analysis to develop.

About one fatal dog attack occurs in North Carolina each year. Two fatal North Carolina dog attacks were recorded in 2011.