Bum crisis really bites in E. Village
An East Village man says he was attacked by a vagrant’s pit bull and blames the area’s exploding homeless population — and Mayor de Blasio — for his wounds.
Ed Vassilev, 42, said he was recently walking his puppy a block from his apartment when an unleashed pit bull — whose owner was nodding off on the sidewalk — ran at him.
“I lifted up my dog — this is 30, 40 feet away — and his pit bull charged me,’’ Vassilev told The Post. “He jumped up and bit the back of my elbow.”
He said he screamed as his arm started gushing blood, and the bum woke up and grabbed the dog.
Cops seized the grayandwhite dog, but the bum wasn’t arrested, said Vassilev, who got 40 stitches.
All of it could have been avoided if de Blasio were addressing the city’s rising homeless problem, he said.
“A couple of years back, there were homeless people, but I would see the same faces,” Vassilev said.
“These are new homeless people that I see, and there are tons of them. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s before and after de Blasio.”
Vassilev said cops at the Ninth Precinct station told him that he could not have the bum arrested but could file a civil lawsuit.
An NYPD spokesman said no charges could be filed unless the owner “directed the dog to attack.”
A neighbor, Michael Puzzo, 47, said he was bitten on the arm by a different vagrant’s pit bull while walking his own dog two blocks away, on East Sixth Street, nine hours earlier.