All Monica Reyes has left of her dog is a piece of his tail. She goes nowhere without this small reminder of her 8-year-old Lhasa apso named Juju, who was killed a week ago by two pit bulls just steps from the family's front door.
"I was trying to get him out of the pit bull's mouth while my daughter was crying, and I was trying to protect the kids from getting attacked," Reyes said.
It happened at the Throggs Neck Houses in the Bronx, where a NYCHA worker tazed the pit bull before he finally dropped Juju's mangled body.
Reyes had no choice but to put him down.
As for the pit bulls' owner, Reyes said he yelled out, "I'm so sorry, call 911," and then ran off with his girlfriend and two dogs and never came back.
Reyes filed a police report but says there seems to be little interest in pursuing it, possibly because the law currently classifies an attack on an animal by another animal as merely a property crime.
Last weekend, two pit bulls attacked Lauren Claus' Chihuahua Penny, the namesake of a new law introduced by New York State Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar, to find the owners of aggressive dogs criminally liable in an attack.
Fortunately, Penny survived, but back in the Bronx, Juju wasn't so lucky.
"That could have been anyone's family member, anyone's kid," Reyes said. "Like who's next? What is it going to take to get these dogs taken off the street?"
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