"and also why someone thought it was a responsible thing to do leaving a child alone with what was essentially a pack of dogs, while she was eating." I don't think you can class a fourteen year old as a child in those terms in the same way you wouldn't leave a toddler alone with dogs iyswim. As I see it, on the whole one of the reasons why it isn't recommended to leave young children alone with dogs is because children can be just as unpredictable. For dogs to turn without warning is in fact incredibly rare, and I would have no qualms about leaving my ten yo in the same room as my two dogs (lab retriever crosses), but I might not have when he was say four, because if he had tormented one of the dogs and been bitten thenit would be something that could have been prevented iyswim.
But four dogs who are that powerful would be able to kill an adult. Esp mastiffs are incredibly powerful dogs and could do quite a bit of damage. I imagine only time will tell what really happened, whether the dogs were known to be agressive, whether they were familliar with the child (was it the family home?) or whether she was staying with friends/family where dogs didn't know her, etc etc.
It is tragic when anything like this happens, however I do think that we need some perspective. According to a woman on the news just now there have been seven deaths in the past eight years. In fact one of the reasons why this story is headline news is because deaths from dog attacks are so incredibly rare. And yet when a dog kills someone we get the knee jerk calls for banning of certain breeds/revisiting the dangerous dogs act/dog licencing to be re-introduced etc etc. Any deth is one too many, but deaths are in fact incredibly rare in the scheme of things.
In fact more people are bitten by golden retrievers than any other breed, are there calls for those to be banned? no of course not.
I don't like mastiffs or staffies and I was bitten by a mastiff when I was a child. But I do think the calls for them to be banned etc is a bit hysterical. Far more children are killed in and by cars than dogs. And yet we don't get this hysteria when a child is killed by a car, why is that? oh yes, it's because children being killed by cars are no longer newsworthy becauseit happens so regularly.
If this family knowingly kept agressive dogs then they should have been brought to account, equally any dog that bites should be destroyed. but I'm not sure that individual cases warrant the public hysteria that follows - each incident should be dealt with individually