LUCKY TO BE ALIVE
Machete vic tells of horror attack as
When police knocked on the door with frightening news about her mother and rescue dog Honey, Savannah Cruz says her worst nightmare came to sudden life.
Cops on Tuesday night walked Cruz, 20, to a spot a block away from her Brooklyn home where her mom, Darlene Duda, 50, and pit bull Honey were drenched in blood after a machete slashing by a frenzied teen whose fury ended with a cop’s bullet to his chest.
“That’s my worst nightmare, having to open the door and someone saying ‘Something happened to your mom or your dog,’ ” Cruz told the Daily News on Wednesday.
“It literally looked like somebody took a bucket of blood and just poured it on her and my dog. That’s how bloody it was,” she said of the attack’s gruesome aftermath. “I just dropped to the floor.”
Cruz said she usually accompanies her mom when they walk Honey. But on Tuesday night, Duda was by herself when Samuel Lazaro, 18, lunged at her with a 2-foot machete near Strauss St. and Dumont Ave. in Brownsville.
Lazaro mercilessly sliced Duda on the back of the head and hands. Honey, trying to protect Duda, pounced on Lazaro and was slashed on the left shoulder and back.
“She was walking by the park. She was just focused on my dog,” Cruz said. “The man, he walked by her, and then while she continued to walk, he struck her from the back of the head. She didn’t even see what was coming.
“And she was like ‘What the hell just happened?’ So she fell to the slope and turned around, and he kept hitting her head. And then my dog tried to attack him, and he got my dog. So then my mom saw that he got my dog, and was grabbing my dog like this” — making a hugging motion — “which is why she has the defensive wounds” on her hand, Cruz said.
“(Honey) didn’t leave my mom’s side, not once.”
“It’s insane to think that this happened, and my mom, during the midst of everything, she wasn’t even worried about herself, she was trying to protect my dog and my dog was trying to protect her,” Cruz said.
When cops raced to the scene, Lazaro charged at police, ignoring commands to drop the blade, authorities said. A 73rd Precinct cop who joined the force in 2018 fired off one round, hitting the teen in the chest, authorities said. He was rushed to a hospital, but could not be saved.
Lazaro had been wandering the street in the normally quiet
neighborhood, brandishing his machete and sparking a flurry of 911 calls before he attacked Duda, police and witnesses said.
“The man was chasing people back to their house, like he was deranged to the point where everybody that coming out, anybody he saw, he was chasing them,” said Rodney Jordan, 51, who was walking his mother’s dog, Christmas, when the mayhem erupted.
“He was trying to get anyone he could get his hands on, and the lady was a stranger to him.”
Video of the aftermath shared with The News shows Duda moaning in pain and bleeding from a head wound as she cradles Honey. The light-brown pup barks at cops as they approach.
“It’s not her fault!” Duda says, trying to calm Honey with a gore-stained hand.
“He was protecting his owner!” a man recording the video screamed about the dog. “(Lazaro) tried to kill that lady out of nowhere for no reason.”
The three-minute video clip also shows police performing CPR on Lazaro as he was laid in the street.
“I’m just grateful to be alive,” Duda wrote online afterward from her hospital bed at Kings County Hospital. “I was walking Honey when I was attacked by a stranger w/a machete. Multiple head/face lacerations. Severed tendon & fractured bones in my right hand. Lacerations to my right hand. Honey was also injured & required stitches, but I’ve been told she’s doing great.”
Julia Lazaro, 51, who raised the teen since he was 7, was devastated, lamenting that police chose a bullet as the first resort to stop the frenzied attack. She told The News her stepson went to church every Sunday with her, and was on track to graduate high school so he could become a car “technician.”
“The police didn’t have to shoot him like that,” she said. “He had a machete. The police had a gun. There was a different way to stop him than killing him.”
The teen, she said, loved dogs, and adored his 5-year-old pit bull.
When she saw the news of the attack, “I started crying,” the stepmother said. “I think of him as my actual son. He’s not like that. He’s never been like that.”
“I felt so terrible. I couldn’t believe it,” she said tearing up in Spanish. “I raised him. I bought him clothes. I did everything for him and he is now gone.”
Cruz told The News she understands.
“This man did lose his life. He’s 18 years old,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m frustrated, I’m angry, and I’m upset about what he did to my mom, and he could have cost her her life.”
“This kid, you don’t know people’s lives,” Cruz said, adding: “I truly do feel sorry for his family that has to deal with the loss of him, and
I just hope that this doesn’t happen to anybody, and I hope that people pay more attention to what other people are going through.”
The man who took the video of the carnage said Lazaro had also charged him and his son as they walked through nearby Betsy Head Park a few minutes before the attack on Duda.
“I’m just glad he didn’t attack my son,” he said. “We were walking around the track and he looked at me and he had that big machete. But my son just kept running. I’m just glad the motherf—-er kept going that way.”
“Obviously he’s suffering some kind of delusion or mental illness, he’s running around with a machete,” said another neighbor, who only identified himself as Ronald. “He had the machete in plain sight. He wasn’t trying to hide it.”
“The police did what they had to do. It was either the police or him,” he added.