Neighbors Shaken by Fatal Mauling : Tragedy: Compton boy, 5, was chasing a ball when guard dogs attacked him. Horror-stricken witnesses were helpless until one man stepped in with a shovel.

The horror, pain and feelings of helplessness hung like a shroud over a Compton neighborhood Wednesday after a 5-year-old boy followed his ball into a neighbor’s yard and was fatally mauled by three German shepherd watchdogs.

Several terrified neighbors, frozen and ineffectual, witnessed the attack on Gilberto Martinez. “We were throwing everything we had [into the yard] to shoo the dogs away,” one of them said. By the time one man jumped the chain-link fence with a shovel to keep the dogs at bay, the boy was naked; his clothes lay in tatters around him.

Gilberto died of his wounds three hours after the 3 p.m. Tuesday attack.

Wednesday, his father, Ruben Martinez, stood in the yard of his modest home, held back tears and faced a handful of reporters and television cameras.

“He was always in here playing. He would never leave here,” Martinez, 30, a nursery worker, said in Spanish, glancing at his yard with its tiny vegetable garden. “He was the most beautiful boy.”

The man who jumped the fence to scare off the dogs and passed the badly wounded boy to safety wished he had arrived sooner.

“He was saying, ‘The dogs. The dogs,’ ” Juan Perez, 34, an auto shop worker, said in Spanish. “It’s bad. I heard this morning he is dead. It’s not an easy thing to see.”

Police said the dogs’ owner, whom a neighbor described as remorseful, would probably not be criminally charged.

Gilberto, described as an affable kindergartner by those who knew him, liked to play in his yard with a ball and sometimes rode his bicycle in a concrete-covered back yard, his father said. On Tuesday, the ball apparently went over the fence, and somehow Gilberto got into the equipment yard behind the house of his neighbor, a stucco contractor.

No one saw the boy enter the yard in the 100 block of South Chester Avenue, a neighborhood of modest homes behind Compton Boulevard. The yard, containing some trucks and cement mixing equipment, was guarded by the German shepherds, which sometimes barked loudly at those who passed, neighbors said. “It’s just supposition at this point, but we feel he either climbed over the fence or worked his way between a pole and a gate,” Compton Police Lt. Steven Roller said.

Loud barking was the first sign that something was wrong.

Juanita Gutierrez, who works just across an alley from the fenced yard, was on her way out to smoke a cigarette when she heard the commotion.

“At first I thought a cat had jumped over,” Gutierrez said. “One had him by the leg. Another by the arm, and another by his little head. All of them were pulling.”

Gutierrez said she started yelling but the dogs continued mauling the boy, who did not scream or call for help. So Gutierrez knocked on the doors of neighboring businesses looking for assistance.

Steve Cressel, who was working at the stationery shop of his father, Compton Councilman-elect Fred Cressel, started throwing anything he could get his hands on, including the headboard of a crib, at the dogs.

Passersby gathered helplessly until Perez vaulted the fence. One mother said she was forced to remove her crying children from the scene.

The boy was alive when he was taken by ambulance to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center. The boy’s uncle, Jose Vasquez, accompanied him.

“I tried to keep him from sleeping,” said Vasquez, who lives with the Martinez family. “He said everything hurt in a very low voice.”

Vasquez was in the house along with Gilberto’s mother, Maria, at the time of the attack. “I heard the dogs but never any screams,” he said.

The three dogs, two males and a female, were being kept in isolation Wednesday in a Los Angeles County animal control facility in Carson. A decision on whether to destroy the animals will not be made until after the Compton Police Department concludes its investigation, officials said.

A spokesman at the shelter said the dogs did not display the aggressive behavior that he had seen with other quarantined animals.

At this point, Roller said, it appears that the death was an unfortunate accident and charges will not be filed against the dogs’ owner, Charles W. Lindsey.

Lindsey, 63, could not be reached for comment, but Cressel said he was shaken. “He and his wife were crying last night,” Cressel said of the Lindseys. “They were very sympathetic.”

Cressel also described the dogs as well-behaved and friendly animals that he would pet on occasion. But other neighbors described them as frightening.

“They jump on my gate, barking at my kids,” said next-door neighbor Paula Buycks. “But I never thought they would go to the extreme of eating somebody.”

While killings by dogs are unusual, experts say even a good dog is capable of hurting a child if the right factors converge. Dogs can exert four times as much strength, pound-for-pound, as a man, and full-grown German shepherds weigh at least 60 pounds, said Dennis Fetko, a San Diego animal behaviorist who has trained Los Angeles County animal control officers in ways to deal with aggressive dogs.

The dogs may have thought that Gilberto and his ball were playthings, he said. Or they may have tried to defend their territory.

“Many dogs kill cats with no intention at all of doing harm to the cat,” Fetko said. “They simply broke the toys they’re playing with.”

Meanwhile, the community began to offer support to the Martinezes. They have two other children, ages 1 and 2, and Maria Martinez is pregnant. The principal at Gilberto’s school, Tibby Elementary, sent home notices Wednesday asking parents to contribute to a fund to help pay for the boy’s funeral. Their church, Our Lady of Victory parish in Compton, is also accepting donations.