On Friday, a woman pulled her car over on busy Leavenworth Street in San Francisco, to find her phone. She opened the door to look under her seat, and that’s when a man approached, grabbed her, and demanded money. He took $5 from her sweater pocket, then pushed her back toward the car.

That’s when Roxy, the woman’s a 12-year-old Pekingese, started barking.

“I’m gonna kill your (expletive) dog,” the man said, chilling the woman.

The man rushed toward the door. The woman blocked his path. They struggled, but the man got the door open and got his hands on the dog’s collar.

“I screamed, ‘No, put her down! Put her down!’ and yelled for help,” the woman told Mercury News, “but no one helped.”

Then “he put Roxy over his head,” she told ABC 7 in an emotional interview. “And threw her toward incoming traffic.”

The man threw Roxy into traffic, where she was run over. The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous out of fear for her safety, said she heard her little dog scream as the car struck. Roxy suffered a ruptured eye socket and a broken pelvis. The man disappeared in the crowd on the sidewalk.

The dog was rushed to the vet, but her injures were too severe. Roxy was euthanized.

“I tried to sleep last night, but right when I closed my eyes, I see her up in the air, getting thrown,” the woman said. “How could someone do that?”

Police are seeking the public’s help in finding the man — and a witness to the horrific crime has offered a $1,000 reward.

“To hold [the dog] above your head as high as you can and then slam it into oncoming traffic is a whole other level of depravity,” said the witness.

Fortunately, police have an image of the culprit, after culling surveillance footage from cameras on the street. Here are still shots from the footage:

And here’s the video:

“The Line-Up” Suspect from Tenderloin Robbery and Animal Cruelty from San Francisco Police on Vimeo.

Anyone with information about the case can call Inspector Elaine Economus from the department’s Tenderloin Station at (415) 345-7348. Hopefully, there will be justice for Roxy.

Via Mercury News