Melvin Felix Officers loaded a dog kennel into the trunk of a
police car as friends of the
owner of the dead pitbull looked on.

A police officer shot a pitbull that was apparently trying to defend its passed-out owner on 14th Street at around 4:15 p.m., horrifying passersby who watched the wounded mutt suffer a slow death.

A man who identified himself as Steve-o, who was lingering at the scene near Second Avenue said he was a friend of the passed-out man, known as Pollock. The dog, according to Steve-o, was named Star.

Another witness, Roland Bueler, said the dog was protecting his master as a police officer tried unsuccessfully to rouse him while an ambulance awaited. “People who live in the neighborhood say he’s along here all the time,” Mr. Bueler said of Pollock. “He had a dog that was, I think, a pitbull mix. And the dog was defending the guy so no one could approach him.”

Melvin Felix Steve-o (left) said he was a friend of the dog’s
owner.

Mr. Bueler’s wife, Larissa Udovik, who had just visited the optometrist at the nearby Eye and Ear Infirmary, noticed the commotion and went to check out the scene. Her curiosity and blurred vision nearly got the best of her — she moved too close to the dog and it lunged at her.

“Then the police shouted and then the dog ran out to the street and he was a bit agitated. The police shot him,” said Mr. Bueler, who couldn’t recall whether he heard one or two shots. “I think they also put some pepper spray on the dog. The dog took about half a minute or a minute to die. It took a bit.”

Witnesses begged the officer to shoot Star again as he whimpered and died an uncomfortably slow death. Eddie Huang, the owner of Baohaus, tweeted an image captured moments after the shots were fired, and wrote that police “shot a dog and let it die slow.”

One eyewitness, who did not want to be identified because he works on the block, said that an officer maced the pitbull after it was shot.

Melvin Felix The belongings of the dog’s owner.

“The cops shot the dog and didn’t put it out of its misery,” the witness said. “The dog was still twitching.”

Steve-o said the dog was still breathing as it was placed in a body bag. “He has seizures,” he said of its owner. “That’s probably why he was passed out on the floor. The first thing they do is shoot his dog? They’re crazy. They threaten us all the time with this — all my friends with dogs — the first chance they get.”

A police spokesman did not yet have details on the incident, but said that no humans were shot. He said he had heard that one officer had been treated at Bellevue Hospital for injuries related to the shooting, but could not confirm how the officer was hurt.