A boy from Wyoming is being hailed as a hero by his family for saving his little sister from a charging dog and letting himself be attacked instead.
Bridger Walker, 6, stood between his little sister and the rampaging animal on July 9. He was bitten several times on the face and head, but managed to grab his sister’s hand and run away with her to keep her safe.
“If someone had to die, I thought it should be me,” the boy later said.
It was unclear what type of dog attacked the boy.
The boy’s aunt, Nicole Walker, posted about the attack on her Instagram account, trying to help the boy get recognized by actors from the Marvel superhero films, such as Tom Holland (Spiderman), Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man) and Chris Hemsworth (Thor).
Bridger received around 90 stitches from a plastic surgeon after the attack and was recovering at home.
Walker posted an update to her Instagram account about her nephew, saying his wounds were looking better, that the boy was in great spirits and his “awesome” personality was intact.
“He can’t smile too widely yet, but he was grinning as I read some of your comments to him,” Walker wrote in her update.
Walker also added that the dog’s owners were “great people who have been nothing but kind to Bridger and his family” and that the Walker family felt no resentment toward them. Instead, there had “only been an increase of love between our families as a result of this incident.”
In a second update, Walker said that in lieu of donations to Bridger (as people had been inquiring about setting up a GoFundMe account for the boy), her family was asking people to donate to the Wounded Warrior Project or Mission 22.
Walker added that her nephew was a science buff with an interest in geology and that people could send him photos of rocks via Instagram or just the rocks themselves to a post office box the family created for him.