A pit bull mix was pepper sprayed and shot by an NYPD officer on Monday
afternoon outside of a KFC in the East Village at 14th St. and 2nd Ave.
at about 4:15 p.m.

According
to a passerby named Johnny Rodriguez, he and several other people
called the New York Police Department, when they observed the man,
identified by police as Lech Stankiewicz, having a seizure at the side
of the road.

When police arrived at the scene, Rodriguez said,
they attempted to approach Stankiewicz, but the man's dog, Star, was
attempting to protect her owner from being harmed. According to
Rodriguez, Star had already approached another passerby, Larissa Udovik,
who got too close to her owner. An officer fired a shot at the dog,
leaving her and the sick man suffering on the street.

A police
source called the shooting "justified." The "video of the encounter"
said the source, "leaves no question that the officers acted properly."

But
others have criticized NYPD for how they handled the case. Doug Halsey,
the director of Ready For Rescue, a non-profit animal rescue group,
told the Gothamist that with irresponsible owners creating problems such
as this, city police "need to be better trained to handle the situation
and be equipped with the proper tools and taught how to use them to
control dogs and other animals in situations like these."

Halsey
was criticizing the use of pepper spray by another police officer on the
dog, an act he said, that would only aggravate aggression.

Christian
Pimentel, 21 told the New York Post, "It was just protecting its
owner," while another witness, who did not wish to be identified, said,
"They just let the dog bleed on the sidewalk, right in front of
children."

A worker at a nearby KFC said that Star and the homeless man were both friendly and harmless.

Remarkably,
both Stankiewicz and Star survived. Star remains in the care of the
Animal Care & Control in NYC, said the East Village Local, but there
also seems to be some discrepancy on how the dog is doing. According to
Animal Control, the pit bull is stable, but the police source said that
Star's outcome "didn't look very optimistic."