A dog walker remains at large after pummeling a 75-year-old Brooklyn grandmother to the ground when she asked the passerby to pick up after their pet — the assault only stopping when a neighbor, a Navy vet, came to her rescue.
A Ring door camera video shows Linda Scott repeatedly punched in the face and kicked earlier this week in front of her Crown Heights home, suffering injuries that landed her in the hospital.
Even after Scott was pounded onto the walkway in her own yard, the unidentified woman in pig tails continued to punch and stomp on her head.
Her 37-year-old neighbor, who only identified himself to the New York Post as Mr. Barnett, said he’d just returned from the gym at around 9 a.m. Monday when he noticed the “commotion” in front of the senior’s home.
“It seemed like a dispute about the dog poop or whatever… a shouting match back and forth,” Barnett, a train conductor, told the Post on Friday. “[When] the young lady in the red came around the corner… the way she approached Miss Linda just let me know that she was about to do something to her.”
“I saw the gate was coming up, and then the young lady came up and put her hands [on the victim] and started assaulting her, that’s when I got out [of] the car.”
During the attack two dogs scurried around the attack, both of them running freely, which is not only improper dog walking etiquette, it is unlawful in New York City where canines must be on a leash no longer than six feet.
Barnett pulled the attacker off the senior then scrambled to close the gate. He described the victim as a “staple in the community” who had “been here for years.”
The woman who attacked her was reportedly accompanying another woman who was walking her dog. Just before the attack, one of the women accused the senior of throwing ammonia on her pet, according to the Post.
The vacant lot next to her home has been a problem for years, her son Michael Scott, told News 12. Neighbors allow their dogs to use the lot but don’t clean up after them, creating an odor that can be smelled from adjacent homes.
His mother admits to dousing the lot with ammonia, which deters the dogs from pooping there, but said she does not use it as a weapon directly on the canines themselves.
Failure to pick up after a dog in a public area carries a $250 fine under the city’s “Pooper Scooper Law” established in 1978.
Scott was released from the hospital Wednesday after the Monday morning attack.
As of Friday, the assailant was still on the loose, police told the Post.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
