Andrea Rosebrock 
Imagine having a beautiful dog that you care about but you have to move somewhere that pets are not allowed. So you take your dog to the Animal Rescue League hoping that he will find a new home and family. Then you find someone who wants the dog and tells you they will give him a home and take care of him. It feels like a miracle, your dog will be saved and go to a good home. You retrieve the dog and put him into the care of this person.
This is the first half of what sounds like a wonderful ‘happy ending’ story for Buju, a 4 yr old German Shepherd pit bull mix in Pittsburgh. The ending, unfortunately, didn’t turn out so happy, it actually turned out gruesome!
A plastic bag was found in the middle of the 7900 block of Susquehanna Street yesterday afternoon and stuffed inside of the bag was the body of Buju. The poor dog had been shot in the back of his head and his right front paw had been cut off.
While an arrest warrant has not yet been issued, the police do have a suspect in mind. “He had been bragging in the community not only had he performed this – that he shot the dog – he also cut off the dog’s front right paw,” Commander Rashall Brackney said. “It was a very, very cruel crime.”
Brackney would not identify the man although the police did receive numerous calls from the public identifying him due to his bragging.
“It was a strange twist of fate that the animal wound up dying at the hand of the caregiver,” she said.
Even some of the police offices at the scene, who witness crimes everyday, were upset of the mutilation killing of the dog. Two of the officers were unable to process the scene because it was too ‘gruesome.’
“If a person can do this to a defenseless animal as a caregiver, you have to wonder what type of violence he is capable of inflicting on society in general,” she said.
Needless to say, the original owner of the dog is very upset. She and her children were attached to Buju and had him since he was a tiny puppy. She now has the horrible task of explaining to her children what happened to the dog that they gave to this man to care for because they didn’t want to take a chance on him being put down if a new owner couldn’t be found to adopt him at the shelter.
The Homewood man, when he is apprehended, will be charged with cruelty to animals and a possible weapons violation for killing and mutilating Buju. If found guilty, he could do some jail time. We can only hope!
Source – MSNBC, Tribune Review, KDKA
I am an ARL volunteer who met and walked Buju a number of times. He was a gentle, darling boy. I can’t imagine why anyone would do this to any animal.
Just to clarify on one point, Buju was an adoptable dog. The dogs who are eligible for adoption at the ARL will NOT be euthanized. The staff and volunteers will work hard to find a home for every single adoptable dog there.
Let’s hope that this criminal gets what he deserves.
I don’t live to far from where this happened. As the owner of dogs, I cannot imagine anyone, ANYONE doing that. Even when people hunt, they are expected to be humane. I’m speechless.
This “fiend” needs to go to prison for a very long time to ‘think about’ what he did and to keep him away from Society so he cannot hurt another animal or human for that matter.
My very sincere sympathy to the woman (and her family) who gave him up for adoption. She thought she was doing a good thing but she must forgive herself. Had she known this would happen she would have held onto Buju very tightly and never let him go.
Unfortunately, these very bad things do happen and it’s up to us as a Society to hold our state legislators ACCOUNTABLE for creating and enforcing TOUGH laws against these “poor excuses for human beings” who walk among us.
This cruel behavior needs to be taken VERY seriously…..Buju was NOT ‘just a dog’. He was a ‘living breathing creature’ that feels emotion, pain and suffering. What is to stop him from harming a person if he is given a mere ’slap on the wrist’ ? Swift and just punishment with hard long jail time is imperative to halting these jerks in their tracks and preventing further escalating acts of cruelty.
[...] man who brutally mutilated and killed the 4yr old shepherd pit bull mix, Buju, that he promised to home and care for was arrested after hours of phone negotiations finally [...]
“hours of phone negotations”………
Herein lies the reason for the continued abuse…….too much leniency, too many lawyers getting paid to waste time protecting the guilty while compromising our safety and that of our pets.
Thankfully he has been arrested and we hope he serves hard jail time for the longest possible sentence.