Firefighters responding to an apartment fire at 2186 Grand Concourse in the Bronx yesterday got a bit of a surprise when they got through the door of apartment 6J. 14 pit bulls, including a number of puppies, were barking and fighting inside the smoke-filled apartment. Because the dogs were fighting, firefighters sprayed chemical extinguisher on them to break them up. After that smoke inhalation seemed to calm the canines down and they were carried to safety.
It took about 60 firefighters nearly half-an-hour to eventually bring the blaze under control.
Investigators are still trying to find the owner of the dogs, but neighbors seem to have different opinions on what exactly he was doing with so many pups. His downstairs neighbor, at least, was quite concerned and told the Times he had previously called the ASPCA and 311 on the owner. “I could hear them day and night, fighting and barking and running around. The smell is very strong," he said.
“Who knows what they wanted to do, like sell the little dogs or the big dogs, nobody knows. We have to look for the owner, where’s the owner at? Nobody knows,” neighbor Rosa Fernandez told CBS.
But another neighbor said the owner was a good guy. “He was breeding them, not fighting them,” the 18-year-old told the Times.
