Pit bull survives being stabbed 17 times in Freeport; person responsible sought

A 2-year-old pit bull found stabbed 17 times on a residential street in Freeport set off alarms with Nassau County animal welfare authorities, who are offering a $5,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest.

The Nassau SPCA, which is backing the reward, warned that whoever attacked the dog, now dubbed Cornell, could be a danger to people as well.

“People start out on animals before they move on to human beings,” SPCA president Gary Rogers said. “Somebody in the community knows what happened to this dog. You have to keep your community safe. You need to call the DA’s office and tell them who did this because next time it could be somebody else; it could be your child.”

The terrier was found badly wounded by a woman in the area of Washburn Avenue near Grand Street on Nov. 27 and taken to Bobbi and the Strays, a shelter in Freeport, District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly said at a Thursday morning news conference.

The injuries, cuts and stab wounds on the pooch’s back and torso behind the right front leg, were too severe for the local shelter, which instructed the woman to take the dog to the Town of Hempstead Animal Shelter.

“I've seen some pretty horrific things, but the extent of the amount of times he was stabbed is unimaginable how someone could ever do that,” said Ashley Behrens, acting director of the shelter. “I don’t see how anyone could hurt an animal, but it was pretty jarring.”

The shelter took the dog to a veterinary hospital in Farmingdale for treatment.

Some of the wounds were superficial, but other injuries went deep enough to puncture the animal’s lungs.

The district attorney, who ran an animal crimes investigation unit for 10 years before become the top prosecutor, said the dog was otherwise healthy and well-fed and does not appear have been involved in dogfighting.

“I believe that this was someone’s pet,” she said. “He’s too healthy and in too good of shape to have been on the street long.”

Donnelly also said she does not believe the dog was attacking the stabber because the wounds were on the side and not the front of the animal.

The Animal Crimes Unit has seen 12 cases over the past year, 10 of which have been prosecuted, according to the district attorney’s office. Statistics for previous years were not immediately available.

There are no suspects in the case. The woman who brought the dog in said that she saw the animal bleeding on the street and took pity on it. Otherwise, investigators are stumped.

The Hempstead Animal Shelter workers are now looking for a home for Cornell, named after Chris Cornell, the lead singer of the grunge band Soundgarden, because they were listening to the hit song "Black Hole Sun" when the dog came into the shelter, Behrens said.

Anyone interested in adopting him should reach out to the shelter.

“He's very affectionate to the people he knows and is comfortable with. So he's definitely coming out of the shock little by little,” she said.

Anyone with information on who owned the dog or on the attack is asked to call the Nassau District Attorney’s Animal Crimes Hotline at 516-571-7755.