CHICAGO (CBS) – Police are searching for two men who pulled off a bizarre robbery Saturday morning in the South Shore neighborhood. The men apparently used a dog as a weapon.
Around 4:30 a.m. victim was trying to get into his car, which was parked along E. 67th Street near South Jeffery, when the pitbull and its owners came up to him. The owner unleashed the dog onto him so they could rob him.
The 30-year-old’s black Nissan sedan was still parked there hours later, but the robbers took his wallet, keys, and money, and the dog bit his left arm and both legs.
Police say after that, he took himself to the University of Chicago Medical Center for treatment. He was in serious condition.
“A well-trained dog can cripple you or kill you, simple as that,” said Daniel McElroy, who has been training dogs for 20 years. “A highly trained dog that does obedience, that can do aggression on command, and that can respond to threats to their handler,” he said.
This robbery used his line of work for evil.
“I train protection dogs because I want people to be safe from this type of thing, not to be a victim to this type of thing using a dog,” he said. “It makes everything bad.”
He even showed CBS 2’s Sabrina Franza how he trains his dogs to bite — safely.
“You do sometimes run into dogs that are just aggressive dogs,” he said. “And if someone has a dog and they know they have an aggressive dog, perhaps they could take him out and release him on someone.”
He also said it is pretty unlikely that this pitbull was scared.
“The fear-biting dog, the dog that just bites because they’re scared. But the dog that bites you because they’re scared is going to bite you and then get space; they want distance.”
CBS 2 asked what the victim should have done.
“The best way to protect yourself is to place your fingers together, put them behind your neck, roll into a ball in less vital areas so you don’t get hit in vital areas,” McElroy said.
Police are still looking for those two robbers who attacked the victim. The investigation is on-going.
