A Dog Dies After Being Shot on Oakwood Drive

Carolyn Bacarella had a routine. Every morning, she would come home and let the family dog Roscoe and her two cats out for a few minutes and feed them when they came back in, before heading back to work. On Tuesday morning, something seemed wrong.

Roscoe, a pitbull-chocolate lab mix Bacarella and her boyfriend, Adam Santiago, have had for nine years, usually came up onto the deck of their Oakwood Drive home and waited by the sliding doors. But he was nowhere to be seen.

"Time goes by and I was calling him and calling him," Bacarella said, remembering how she called Santiago in frustration because she had to get back to work.

Roscoe was close by.

"I opened the front door and found him in the driveway," Bacarella said. "He was trying to drag himself back to the house and he couldn’t move. When he made it to the house he fell on the floor."

The dog was bleeding from his mouth.

"I didn’t know what happened. They told me he was shot," she said of the visit to Mobile Veterinary Clinic in Trumbull.

Santiago came home and drove Bacarella and Roscoe to the animal hospital.

The veterinarian shaved Roscoe and saw there was a hole on his side and an X-ray showed he had been shot with a pellet gun. The pellet pierced his lung, which collapsed.

"There was so much fluid that his insides were drowning," Bacarella said. "I said, 'Do whatever you have to do.' He took one more X-ray and he said, 'We’re in the business of saving animals and people have spent thousands of dollars to save their animals. Your dog is in a serious amount of pain.'"

The doctor reluctantly recommended putting Roscoe to sleep. Bacarella said Santiago became so upset he had to leave the room.

The investigation

Bacarella and Santiago live on a dead end street and she said there is an electric fence surrounding their property.

"I couldn’t believe it," Bacarella said of their dog being shot. "We live in a nice little working class neighborhood down here. I live on a dead end — six houses really."

"You could be dealing with someone who drove by and took a shot at it and took off," Animal Control Officer Ed Risko said Wednesday.

Though the family has an electric pet fence, Risko said those kinds of fences tend to malfunction in winter conditions.

Risko walked around the neighborhood with Santiago, searching for blood and paw prints in the snow, while trying to re-trace Roscoe's steps in an effort to pinpoint where he was shot.

"I don’t think it was deliberate to kill it," Risko said. "It was from an air pellet gun, .177 caliber, ranging from an air rifle or one of those hand pump guns."

He said the bullets travel about 770 to 1000 feet per second. Risko noted there have been no vandalism complaints for a pellet gun in the area.

Risko interviewed neighbors living on Oakwood Drive, but said he has nothing to go on yet.

Bacarella said none of her neighbors had ever complained about her dog, before. But Risko said, just because nobody reported a nuisance, doesn’t mean they weren’t having one.

Roscoe was unlucky because the pellet struck him between two ribs and entered his chest cavity, according to Risko, who said officers examined the dog's body on Tuesday night.

"We're still investigating, at the very least for a week," he said. "If we don’t find anything, it remains open."

Anyone with information, should call Officer Ed Risko at Animal Control at 203-452-3760 and leave a message.

A beautiful dog

Bacarella has three sons, Frank, 15, Nicholas, 20, and Anthony, 22. She said Roscoe was like another son.

"He was a great boy. He was a beautiful dog," Bacarella said. "Like Adam says, he was like a little boy. He knew when you said things. He was very playful. He was like a person. I have three boys and he was just like another boy.

"He loved people. He played outside and fetched with the ball. We'd hear the car doors shut and I’d say, 'Your brothers are home! You brothers are home from school!'"

The loss of their pet Roscoe still has not totally sunk in.

"When we come home, I expect the dog to jump on the couch and put his paws up and look at me," Bacarella said. "He'd hang his head and paws off the back of the couch."

When Bacarella and her boyfriend would go to bed for the night, Roscoe would hop off the couch and go upstairs to sleep at the end of their bed.

When the family went to the grocery store, they'd always buy Roscoe a "baby," a stuffed animal to play with. Bacarella fondly remembers how the dog would sniff around each grocery bag, until he found his new toy.

Tuesday morning's shooting incident has left them with only memories.

"It can't bring my dog back," Bacarella said of catching the shooter. "I want my dog and I can't bring my dog back. Whoever did this probably doesn't have much of a conscience in the first place. He really must not care about anything."

Bacarella said her family is still in shock that something like this could have happened in their neighborhood.

"Right now I’m not angry yet," she said. "I’m sure I’ll get there. We’re just sad right now."

Bacarella said her sons are upset too, especially Frank.

"My youngest is so angry," she said. "He keeps saying, 'Who would shoot a dog?'"