A 68-year-old man was busted on animal cruelty charges after he was caught driving with two dogs leashed to the back of a car in Queens, authorities said.
Dan Bujor, who lives out of a school bus parked in Long Island City, was arrested Sunday on charges including overdriving animals, torturing and injuring animals and failure to provide sustenance, in addition to driving without a license, in connection with the bizarre incident, cops said.
“I tied the dogs to the car,” Bujor allegedly told investigators after his arrest, “because I did not want them pooping inside the car.”
A witness reported seeing Bujor behind the wheel of a Volkswagen Passat driving at a slow rate near 11th St. and 43rd Ave. in Long Island City around 6 p.m. on Sunday, prosecutors with the Queens District Attorney’s Office said.
Leashed to the trunk and running behind the Volkswagen were Marzipan, a 2-year-old German Shepherd mix, and Nougat, a pit bull mix between 2 and 4 years old, according to a criminal complaint.
“Even though it was going slowly, the dogs looked very tame, timid and a little scared,” Piamsook Homrod, 43, a witness who dialed 911 and is named in the criminal complaint against Bujor, told the Daily News.
A group of about eight people, including Homrod, tried to stop Bujor by knocking on his window, jumping in front of his car and attempting to free the animals as he drove for roughly two blocks with the distraught canines running behind.
As Bujor passed through the intersection, Nougat’s leash fell off the car and the suspect pulled over to the side of the road to wrangle the animal, Homrod said.
“When the other guys, other civilians, were trying to stop him, talk to him, stop the car, the guy who was dragging the dogs, he was saying, like, ‘Don’t worry, they are used to it.’ And then he grabbed the dogs back inside the car and he drove away,” Homrod said.
Bujor had fled the scene by the time police arrived, but officers quickly found him at his school bus parked nearby — with some help from Homrod.
“We decided to grab our car and circle around the neighborhood to search for him,” she said. “I know it’s not so safe (to do that), but it’s very fortunate that we found his car. He lives right around the corner from where everything happened. He has like an RV, a little school bus turned into a mobile home.”
Bujor told investigators he had borrowed the Volkswagen in order to purchase gas for his school bus, a law enforcement source said.
He obtained the German Shepherd mix in Pennsylvania and took in the pit bull mix after it was abandoned by a neighbor.
“Everyone knows my dogs,” Bujor is quoted as saying in the complaint. “Everyone loves my dogs.”
The animals were taken to the E. 92nd St. ASPCA animal hospital and adoption center in Manhattan, where Marzipan was treated for a ruptured left eardrum and Nougat received treatment for abrasions on her paw pads and wrists, as well as inflammation of the skin between her toes and diarrhea.
“There is no reasonable guy who would hook their dogs to the car like that,” Homrod said. “Even though he says that the dogs are used to it, I don’t believe that the dogs are happy with what he’s doing. I saw the pit bull that got loose, he was drooling like crazy.”
The charges against Bujor are not bail eligible and he was released following his arraignment in Queens Criminal Court on Monday.
