NEW YORK – Sunlight reflected off the tombstone on a table in a Brooklyn apartment. The arrival of the stone marked nearly six months since Jessica Chrustic and her beloved golden retriever Moose were attacked while walking in Prospect Park and served as a grim reminder that the dog’s killer is still on the loose.
The case seemed open and closed. Neighbors said the suspect lived in the park and frequently reported seeing him in the days after the attack, and Chrustic herself called 911 during a second terrifying encounter with him.
However, the New York Police Department confirmed to Fox News last week that there are no arrests in the case.
“This shouldn’t have had to come to this,” Chrustic told Fox News. “I shouldn’t have had to be attacked twice.”
Jessica Chrustic bred many dogs before adopting Moose. She was two and a half years old when the couple was attacked in August 2022. (Courtesy of Jessica Chrustic)
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Chrustic and Moose confronted a man she had seen many times in Prospect Park one morning in August. He often muttered to himself while carrying a garbage bag and a long thick cane. Chrustic tried to get the dog as far away from her as possible, but she said the man pulled out a Gatorade bottle and began dousing her with liquid. She later realized that it was urine.
As she rushed Moose up a nearby set of stairs, Chrustic felt the stick hit her in the lower back.
“When I turned around, Moose was trying to protect me,” he said. “I just wanted to protect my dog, and my dog was trying to protect me.”
The next blow hit Moose square in the face with a sickening crack.
Early morning bicyclists and pedestrians stopped to assist and the suspect fled. Chrustic remembers talking to the police and then taking Moose to the vet for emergency dental surgery.
But Moose’s internal injuries went undiagnosed. Five days later, she died of sepsis.
‘MY DOG WAS TRYING TO PROTECT ME’ — WOMAN SHARES EMOTIONAL STORY OF PROSPECT PARK ATTACK:
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Chrustic received an outpouring of support from his neighbors both in person and on the Nextdoor website. Many had also encountered the suspect in the park before, and some shared photos of the man in hopes they would help police make an arrest.
But it was 2022, two summers after social justice protests swept through New York City following the murder of George Floyd. Some within the progressive Park Slope enclave opposed the idea of sending police after a homeless black man who appeared mentally ill. After Chrustic sought help from his representative on the city council, Shahana Hanif, a spokesperson for the council member told The New York Times that the police were not “the vehicle to provide security for our community.”
“You have a dangerous person who is attacking people, who is in a public space, who needs to be removed. Period,” Chrustic said. What happens next, whether it’s jail or mental health treatment, is a “separate conversation,” he said.
Chrustic has lived in New York City for two decades and said she has never felt unsafe before.
“I can genuinely say that I have a lot of PTSD right now,” she said.
Crime across the city has risen 32.4% in the past two years, according to data from the NYPD. The vast majority of those cases, including the attack that killed Moose, remain unsolved.
Less than 30% of crimes in New York City were cleared in the second quarter of 2022, the most recent period for which New York Police Department data was available.
Chrustic said police “made it very clear” that she needed to be physically present for an arrest to be made, even though Prospect Park was the last place she wanted to be after her dog’s death.
So when an elderly woman who had witnessed the first attack called on October 21 and said she had her eyes on the suspect, Chrustic got out of bed and ran to Prospect Park, calling 911 and a sergeant assigned to his case in the way. When he got to the park, he saw a police car and desperately tried to get them to roll down the window.
“They waved me away,” he recalled.
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Chrustic, a marathon runner, ran through the park until she saw the suspect and followed him further into the park, worried she would lose him before police arrived. She then said that the man ran towards her with a mace, spraying her body. She withdrew but didn’t give up, calling 911 multiple times as she resumed searching for her.
The man was becoming increasingly erratic and eventually turned on her with the staff, she said.
“It’s the same thing that killed Moose with, and it’s chasing me down the street at top speed,” he said. “After that, I said, ‘I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.'”
Jessica Chrustic and her dog Moose walked three times a day in Prospect Park near her home in Brooklyn, New York. (Courtesy of Jessica Chrustic)
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Chrustic estimates that police arrived about 40 minutes after he saw the first police car parked next to the park.
“We may have dropped the ball,” 78th Precinct Commanding Officer Frantz Souffrant acknowledged days later during a virtual meeting attended by dozens of angry Park Slope residents, Patch reported.
An NYPD spokesman told Fox News the investigation is ongoing and an arrest will be made “when a positive identification can be made.”
“I gave them exactly where he slept, exactly where he stayed,” Chrustic said. “He is [known by] everyone in the community. It was never a question of being able to find it.”
She said she believes there are people in the NYPD who “genuinely want to do a good job” but are paralyzed by other issues.
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“And there are also some people who really don’t want to do their job,” he added. “That’s kind of hard to parse.”
As Chrustic sat in her apartment with Moose’s toys gathering dust in a basket on the floor, she was resigned to the fact that she might not be able to close.
“Unfortunately, I think it’s going to take someone else being assaulted for it to shut down,” he said.
To see Chrustic tell more of his emotional story, click here.
