NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — From just four weeks old, Nakita Young raised King, her Yorkie-Shih Tzu mix.
"I taught him to be so loveable and very smart. He'll come and knock at the door when he wants to come in," she said.
Young and her kids considered King a member of their family. So, when they headed out to Virginia Beach over Memorial Day weekend, they took him to the Oceanfront too.
"King stopped and played with a lady who was renting beach chairs," she said. "He ended up sniffing and playing with another dog out there."
One second King was playing around, the next second, Young was screaming for help.
"I saw a gray Pit Bull just running towards us and swooped him right up in his mouth. I had no time to grab King. All I had left was King's leash dangling in my hand," said Young.
Virginia Beach police said King was leashed on the beach and an off-leash Pit Bull attacked and killed him.
Young said there was video someone shot of her picking up King's lifeless body and it shows exactly how she felt.
"I wanted to save my dog. I wish I could've done more to save him and I couldn't. I just felt so hopeless," Young said. "It was like I had to pick up one of my children off that beach."
As she reflects on that day, Young wishes she would've known about the restrictions for dogs at the Oceanfront or she would have never brought King to the beach.
Now, she hopes officials make more of an effort to bring awareness to the rules.
"Broadcast it on the news, radio stations. Have bigger signs posted because, out of about a thousand people in that crowd, I did not see one sign," she said.
She's pushing for more awareness of the rules so that no other families have to endure what she endured.
"I'd do anything to get him back," she said.
She said when she screamed for help, someone on the seventh floor at the 31st Street Hilton heard her. Those people have since reached out to her and paid to get King cremated for Young's family.
Kristin Foster was arrested for public intoxication, and more charges are pending.
Animal control said she isn't the owner, but was watching the Pit Bull that day. That dog is now in animal control's custody.