Dog attack
A 75-year-old Queens woman died Monday after she was mauled by her dog, a hulking mixed-breed mastiff she'd planned to put to death because he was too aggressive, police sources and neighbors said.

Victim Louise Hermida's autistic 39-year-old son, Daniel Ferraro, was also bitten by the bloodthirsty pet, named Boss, and suffered minor leg injuries.

The horrifying attack by the powerful mastiff-Great Dane mix happened just past midnight in the family's Long Island City home on 27th St., neighbors said.

Hermida was bitten in her upper torso and found at the bottom of the basement steps in her two-story townhouse, sources said.


One neighbor, Rosa Ortiz, said Ferraro knocked on her door with a bloody leg and told her, "My mother wants you."

"The dog bit her, she's dying," Ortiz recalled him saying.

"I went downstairs and saw my neighbor on the floor — it was bad. It was really bad. I saw her arms, the skin out, and her head full of blood. She was hurt," Ortiz said.

Hermida planned to have Boss put down Wednesday because he was out of control, said David Lopez, Ortiz's husband.

Emergency Services Squad officers sedated the dog, which was turned over to Animal Care and Control. Neighbors said Boss weighed about 160 pounds.

Hermida remained tough as she was hauled off on a stretcher.

"She just looked at me with her little eyes and told me 'Yeah, I'm OK,' " Ortiz recalled.

Boss kept barking from behind a window as his doomed owner was rushed to the hospital.

"He was just vicious, he was just barking. I told the ambulance people he better stay locked in there, you know!" Ortiz said.

Hermida died at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell at 6 a.m.

Ferraro was being held in the psych unit of the hospital. In a brief conversation with the Daily News, he said of Boss, "He was a good dog. We had him for a long, long time."

Ferraro's twin brother, Nick, insisted their mom did not die from the dog attack. "She had preexisting conditions. She had a heart attack," he said.

He said the family took in strays and his mom was trying to break up a fight between Boss and another dog when Boss attacked.

Often referred to as "gentle giants," mastiffs originally were bred as war and guard dogs.

Boss was adopted in 2011 from an Animal Care and Control Center, according to officials.

The dog chomped and killed a terrier a week and a half ago, said John Brien, the super of a nearby construction site.

"It was squeezing it so hard in its mouth," Brien said.