A Florida man is recovering from a gunshot wound after a motorist became angry and pulled a gun because a loose dog forced his pickup truck to stop.
Peter Harbachuk, 46, told the Tampa Bay Times that he and his wife were walking their 4-year-old golden retriever, Bella, when the dog escaped from her leash.
Bella darted in front of a pickup truck, forcing the vehicle to stop. After coming to a halt, a woman got out of the truck to yell at the couple.
Harbachuk said that he asked the woman to get back in her truck while he tried to get his dog back on the leash.
That’s when the woman got back in the pickup, and a man emerged with a gun.
“Some dude hopped out and he pointed a gun toward my head,” Harbachuk recalled. “I said, ‘Hey. This doesn’t have to go down like this.’”
The man then lowered his aim slightly, closed his eyes and fired a round into Harbachuk’s leg, he explained. The couple in the truck fled the scene before police and paramedics could arrive.
St. Petersburg police are searching for “a clean-shaven, muscular, 5-foot, 10-inch tall man between 30 and 35 years old. The woman was thought be about 5 foot, 5 inches and 20 to 25 years old. She was petite with short brown hair. The suspects may have been traveling in a dark Ford F-150 pickup truck.”
Just another day in America, where the insane proliferation of firearms makes everyone so damned safe, “This could’ve been anyone. It could’ve been my wife,” Harbachuk told the Times. “It could have been just any person walking down the street.”
