Donald Savino allegedly aimed his high-powered air rifle from an open window and fired two pellets at the 8-year-old pooch, Spike, about 6 p.m. Tuesday, officials said.
“He was smelling a tree,” said Spike’s owner, Marco Lopez, 49. “Suddenly, I hear this noise .... I hear my dog cry — he was screaming in pain.”
The wounded pooch hobbled back to Lopez’s house next door before it collapsed. Lopez spotted Savino standing near an open window of his Throggs Neck home.
“I said, ‘Why did you shoot my dog?’ ” Lopez recalled. “But he wouldn’t come out.”
Lopez and his family rushed the 9-pound dog to an emergency vet, but he could not be saved.
Savino — who kept a sign on his lawn that read, “Keep your dog off the grass” — later confessed to the shooting, according to court papers.
“OK, I did it,” Savino allegedly said. “I didn’t mean to kill the dog. I just wanted to shoot it in the butt and scare him.”
Investigators found the rifle, a Crossman .22-caliber Magnum, inside Savino’s home. He was waiting Saturday to be arraigned on a string of charges that include animal cruelty and weapons possession.
Lopez said his wife and three children were so devastated by the loss of their pet that he bought a poodle puppy, named Lex, on Saturday.
“You have no idea all the pain we went through,” Lopez said. “We loved (Spike) so much .... It was such a terrible way that he died.”
“You have no idea all the pain we went through,” Lopez said. “We loved (Spike) so much .... It was such a terrible way that he died.”
(New York Daily News - Apr 13, 2013)
