Police looking for owner of pit bull that killed small poodle

By Laurie Perez, Dean Fioresi

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    SANTA MONICA, California (KCAL, KCBS) — Police are searching for the owner of a pit bull that attacked and killed a toy poodle dog in Santa Monica on Friday evening.

Christopher Dietrick and Alyssa Kluge are the owners of Dublin, the 11-year-old toy poodle that was killed. They’ve put up signs all over the city hopeful that someone will be able to point them in the right direction.

The attack happened at around 5:30 p.m. near the intersection of Main Street and Strand Street, close to the beach, according to the Santa Monica Police Department.

Surveillance video from the scene shows bits of the incident, which happened for almost a minute, all of which Dietrick said he was fighting to save their beloved dog.

“As we were walking with our toy poodle, that pit bull lunged and got a hold of our baby. There was a big struggle, it was pretty gruesome,” he said. “I just kept punching and punching and punching.”

They say that they were walking by a man, holding the pit bull on a leash, while he talked to a man inside of a car parked in the street.

When they finally pulled the pit bull off of Dublin, the other owner fled with his dog in tow, running north on Main Street.

At the same time, the driver of the white sedan that the unknown dog owner was talking to jumped out of the car and began to pick up what Dietrick and Kluge said was a wade of cash that scattered during the dog attack.

“It happened so fast and it was so loud and then all of a sudden, everyone started screaming that he was taking off and he started running,” Dietrick said.

A Good Samaritan that was parked nearby rushed the couple to a nearby veterinarian’s emergency room.

“We came closer and we saw this guy sitting on the ground, his arms around a dog and the woman next to him screaming,” the woman said. “My girlfriend said, ‘There’s no way he could be alive.’ And we said, ‘Maybe, maybe, maybe.'”

Dublin ultimately died, suffering wounds that proved to be fatal.

“He died in my arms … I’ve had him since he was nine weeks old, named him Dublin cause I got him on St. Patrick’s Day,” Kluge said. “He is our son and losing a pet is horrific, obviously, but in the violent way that we experienced it if feels like it’s going in the back of my eyelids, that’s all I can see.”

Dietrick also sustained a bite wound during the chaos.

Police say that the pit bull, formally known as a Staffordshire Terrier, was gray-and-white.

Anyone who knows more is urged to contact Santa Monica Animal Control at (310) 458-8595.

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