The owners of the 14-year-old rescue dog who died following a brutal stabbing in Central Park are terrified over the sudden attack — that included the alleged knifeman siccing his pack of vicious pups on them.
Brian Robert, 52, said he doesn’t know what his dog’s alleged murderer is capable of after the Saturday night nightmare, which ended with his poor pup Eli sprawled on the pavement, soaked in his own blood following a canine brawl that also involved the killer’s three dogs.
That’s why Brian said he’s now avoiding the park — and storing a machete near his door.
“He’s a crazy guy,” Brian told The Post Sunday about his alleged attacker, whom he’s familiar with because he often sees him walking what he identified as three mini bullies around the park near the 106th Street and Fifth Avenue entrance.
Mini bullies are a mix of the American pit bull terrier and American Staffordshire terrier.
Brian had even complimented the man’s dogs in the past — they look like mini pit bulls, he said, and he admired them.
But apparently his goodwill didn’t make an impression on the knife-wielding animal — especially after he chastised the man at about 8:30 p.m. Saturday for letting his dogs snap at Brian’s other pup, a tiny 17-year-old miniature pinscher named Sadie.
“I was trying to correct him and say it’s not OK, your dog just tried to bite my dog,” said Brian, who didn’t want his full name used out of fear of retribution. “And then he just wanted to be a tough guy and he started trying to talk to me like he’s my dad. I know the guy, I’ve spoken to him. But his dogs never tried to bite my dog.”
“We just had words, like, regular, stupid guy words,” Brian said, adding that he and his wife, Melanie, kept trying to walk away.
But things escalated quickly, Melanie told The Post: “It happened so fast, so sudden.”
Before the couple knew it, the man had loosened his own dogs off their leashes — and sicced them on Brian.
“All of a sudden, three dogs are attacking me and [my wife] picked up my little dog … because [the suspect] was trying to punch me,” Brian recalled.
“He was exhausted,” Brian said of his poor pooch. “When he was younger he would have been able to handle this.”
Brian punted one of the aggressive dogs, he said, but the leashes had all tangled together. That’s when the man allegedly whipped out a folding knife and sunk it into the senior pup — who Brian rescued 12 years ago.
He heard Eli cry out.
“My dog never stood up again,” Brian said.
The perp — who was wearing an orange hat, gray shirt and blue jeans — took off with his angry animals. Police are still hunting him.
Meanwhile, Brian rushed Eli to a vet on 63rd Street, where doctors found a tumor that likely would have killed the pooch in about five months, he said.
That, combined with the internal injuries and the thousands of dollars it would have cost to try to patch him back up, left Brian with little choice but to put him down.
He pulled out a can of pepper spray and emptied it in the suspect’s face but it did nothing. The attack dogs were latched onto poor Eli, a pit bull-German shepherd mix, and hung off him as elderly pup futilely tried to fight back.
Brian said Eli’s death has been particularly tough for Melanie.
“It’s hard, because the dog was attached to her,” Brian said.
And Melanie said she’s not sure if she wants another pup after this.
“I don’t want to see that happen again,” she said. “I’m sad and I’m scared about what happened [Saturday].”
Now, the couple is stuck with a paralyzing fear of what’s to come. And they won’t be walking Sadie in Central Park anytime soon.
“I know stuff happens,” Brian said. “But I thought I was pretty safe around this neighborhood.”
Additional reporting by Joe Marino and Larry Celona
