A vicious dog that attacked several pets on the Upper East Side last year, killing one, has struck again a year after its owners made plans to have it euthanized, The Washington Post has learned.
According to the victim and witnesses, Sico jumped out of a car with two other “snarling” German shepherds outside his owner’s now-closed bookstore on East 92nd Street on Friday morning and attacked a 71-year-old woman who was walking her dog.
“The door slammed open and three huge dogs started attacking us,” said Lucy Davis, a 30-year Upper East Side resident who was thrown to the ground during the attack.
The shocking footage showed a woman in her 70s lying on the ground, cradling her arms around 11-year-old Cavalier King Charles spaniel Oscar, while three men shielded him from one of the German shepherds.
In an attempt to protect his dog, which is much smaller than himself, Davis repeatedly punched one of the other dogs in the nose, then pushed away the other dog when it lunged at him.
“I kept yelling, ‘No, no!'” she recalled.
Meanwhile, the bespectacled man was seen on video yanking the muzzled Psycho dog by its collar and throwing it into his car, before turning around to handle the second dog.
“If that man hadn’t gotten out of his car and called the dogs back, my dogs would have been killed,” Davis said.
The owner repeatedly vented his frustration that “these dogs should have been put down,” Davis said, a reference to Syco’s owner, Linda Hudson, previously promising to euthanize him following a series of attacks that terrorized the neighborhood.
Hudson said she planned to euthanize Saiko after the snarling dog was accused of injuring at least four local dogs last year, including Baby, a 7-pound toy poodle who had to be euthanized after suffering a broken spine in an attack.
In a letter of apology to neighbours, Hudson claimed the vet had refused her request to have her aggressive dog euthanised.
Baby’s owner, Akiva Tripp, said her dog “started shaking and crying” on Friday after learning that Siko had attacked again, just two hours after Tripp had been walking her new puppy, a 1-year-old toy poodle named Lola B., on the same block.
UES resident Tori Pratt said Hudson was standing in the entrance to her former bookstore, La Librairie des Enfants, during Friday’s attack and seemed largely unconcerned about the chaos her pet animals were causing.
“I just started yelling at her, ‘Your dog is doing it again, your dog is doing it again,’ and she was totally unconcerned,” said Pratt, 33, who worries that Hudson’s untamed animals will harm her dog or young children.
The bookstore owner, who announced earlier this year that he was relocating his store to the West Village, previously claimed he had kept the dog at his Westchester County home since the deadly attack last August.
Hudson did not respond to a request for comment.
