KEARNY –
A walk in the park turned out to be anything but for a man and his dog last week. While the two were on an afternoon stroll along the banks of the Passaic River, the dog was shot and wounded, apparently by someone firing a weapon from the Newark side of the river. The man was not hit, and the dog survived.
Kearny police said the shooting, which they described as an “isolated incident,” occurred about 1:30 p.m., Monday, Aug. 18, in Riverbank Park, but it was not reported until the following morning.
The man, a township resident, was walking his canine north along the river between Bergen Ave. and Afton St. when the dog was hit in the left side by a small projectile, fired from either a pellet gun or a small-caliber rifle, police said. The owner rushed his pet to a veterinary hospital, where it received emergency treatment.
According to Kearny Police Chief John Dowie, the pellet “was so small, the doctor felt it would do more damage to remove it” than to leave it in. “But the dog’s okay.”
The chief assured the public that there is “no mad sniper” on the prowl.
Whoever fired the shot “was not lying in wait for the dog,” Dowie said.
The section of Newark across the Passaic from the scene has “a lot of abandoned buildings,” Dowie noted. Kearny detectives went to the area after the report came in Aug. 19, “but nothing of evidentiary value was found.”
-Karen Zautyk
