Taxi driver dies after confrontation over roaming dogs

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

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Years of re­port­ed con­stant ap­peals for him to se­cure his dogs end­ed with a 66-year-old man dy­ing on Fri­day af­ter­noon af­ter a fight with neigh­bours.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said they re­ceived a re­port of an as­sault at Thomas Street, Sun­shine Av­enue, San Juan.

Of­fi­cers of the San Juan Po­lice Sta­tion said that when they ar­rived around 4 pm, they found 66-year-old PH taxi dri­ver Pe­ter Pe­ters blood­ied and bruised. His life­less body was propped up against a wall.

Res­i­dents said Pe­ters was con­stant­ly told about his dogs, which roamed the area freely, at­tack­ing peo­ple. Af­ter an­oth­er in­ci­dent, it is al­leged that neigh­bours con­front­ed the man, who was then beat­en to death.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed his home, his 68-year-old niece, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said she, too, had to con­stant­ly beg her un­cle to se­cure his dogs. She said she even had to put things in place to stop the dogs from bit­ing her in­ter­net ca­ble.

“He come in the gate, but he was so out of it, whether he prob­a­bly drug him­self or what­ev­er, but he couldn’t push the gate. He didn’t have the strength to even open the gate and let the dog out. The dog run out now and a lit­tle child was pass­ing and the dog take off be­hind the child. The child stand up and the dog very vi­cious. All how I tell this man, tie your dog, he not do­ing that.”

Res­i­dents al­so con­firmed that Pe­ters was warned sev­er­al times about keep­ing his dog tied. One res­i­dent claimed Pe­ters was not beat­en but slapped twice and fell twice, hit­ting his head.

Pe­ters’ niece claimed she and her 8-year-old grand­daugh­ter were vic­tims of his fe­ro­cious dog at­tack on more than one oc­ca­sion, with the lat­est be­ing last week­end. She de­scribed her un­cle as a trou­ble­some man who, along with his five dogs, ter­rorised the neigh­bour­hood. She said she made sev­er­al calls to the po­lice for as­sis­tance, to no avail.

“Is years I go­ing through this. Years! The whole fam­i­ly go­ing through this. But when I call on the au­thor­i­ties to save me, no­body ain’t come. But when some­thing hap­pened, you see every­body show up. Well, I thank God now. I thank­ing God for sav­ing me, sav­ing my life.”

The re­tired hair­dress­er said that af­ter Pe­ters died, one of his oth­er rel­a­tives came and locked all five dogs in his down­stairs apart­ment and left.

Homi­cide of­fi­cers are con­tin­u­ing their en­quiries.