Dog Walk in Central Park Ends With Dog Fatally Stabbed

A New York couple's dog walk through Central Park ended with one of their dogs fatally stabbed after an altercation with another dog walker who then fled. The couple was walking a pit bull and a miniature pinscher, both leashed, when three unleashed dogs started attacking their pups, biting both of them. There was a verbal argument between the person walking those dogs and the couple, and when the woman with the leashed dogs tried to break up the fight between the canines, the suspect pulled out a switchblade and stabbed the leashed pit bull, the New York Daily News reports. Its injuries required it to be euthanized, NBC News reports.

The stabbing suspect ran from the scene and police are still searching for him, ABC 7 reports. "There was a dog on the ground that was dead, a lot of blood around it, a guy was trying to do something—and three other pit bulls without leashes ... three pit bulls around him," said one eyewitness. The dead pit bull's owner tells the New York Post he has seen the man walking his dogs in the park before and had even admired them in the past, but that things went wrong on Saturday night after the man's three dogs nipped at his two and he chided the man. He says it was at that point the man let his dogs off-leash and "sicced" them on the couple's dogs. He says the suspect also tried to punch him during the melee. (More New York City stories.)