Bay Ridge animal lovers released a video this week of the man the believe responsible for poisoning neighborhood cats, dogs, and birds. It appears to be the first footage of the poisonings that locals have reported since August — but it does not ease the fears of neighbors, said the man who captured the cruel act on camera.
“The whole neighborhood is in a stir, they’re paranoid that their dogs will get a whiff of something and then you have a dead dog on your hands and you don’t even know why,” Brian Baglioni said.
Baglioni bought and set up his own surveillance camera on his fire escape in October to catch the killer in action after police told him he’d need to catch the poisoner or poisoners in the act. Video released this week shows a man using a long pole to knock a bird feeder out of a 93rd Street tree, dumping its contents out, and pouring what appears to be anti-freeze around the food for birds to mistakenly eat in late January.
Baglioni and his neighbors suspect the man in the video is part of an animal-killing cabal in southern Bay Ridge, because residents have seen a handful of different individuals acting suspiciously around cat food locals leave out for the ‘hood’s feral felines.
First, the group of neighbors noticed someone was poisoning food they put out for the local fauna — then they realized one of the fiends was leaving out his own tainted treats. One neighbor even claimed to see someone trespassing onto her property to plant contaminated cat food.
Locals thought that putting bird feeders high in trees would discourage the killer, but the video shows the apparent culprit is determined to foul the fowls’ food — though his motivations perplexed Baglioni.
“Maybe they think the animals are a nuisance or they just don’t like animals, whether that’s for aesthetic purposes or they’re just annoyed with them, we don’t know,” he said.
Baglioni does not recognize the man in the video and would not point fingers, but hoped others might come forward to help law enforcement identify him, he said.
Police have the video and are investigating, a department spokesman said, noting that no one has actually produced any dead animals as evidence of the supposed pattern.
“Allegations of animal abuse are taken very seriously by the department and we encourage anyone that has discovered a dead animal and suspects criminality to report that to the police,” he said.
Police are offering a $2,500 reward for information about the spate of alleged poisonings and are asking anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577–8477.
