A tiny Pekingese dog was viciously stabbed last night trying to fend off a man who “flipped out” and suddenly attacked her teen owner and her friend in Brooklyn, cops said.
Derek Torres, 12, said he was playing with pal Esther Rosa, 15, in the lobby of their apartment building on Eighth Avenue in Sunset Park when a neighbor “just started flipping out.
“I have no idea why he did it,” said Derek, who got 59 stitches to his arm and knee. “I said, ‘Hi’ to him. He said, ‘Hi, kid,’ and he came after me with a knife.”
The attacker slashed both children and then the dog with a kitchen knife. Cops arrested Wilfred Jalarza, 31, nearby. He was charged with assault.
Esther, who received three stitches in her hand, is “heartbroken” over the 2-year-old pooch, named Candy, her father said.
Alejandro Rosa said his daughter got the pint-sized pet, which weighs about 5 pounds, as a gift from a neighbor.
The dog is now the family’s hero. After being stabbed in the stomach “trying to protect the kids,” Candy “just laid down in a corner,” Rosa said.
“We’re hoping she pulls through. When I took her down to the veterinarian’s, they said she wasn’t going to make it. But she’s still alive.”
Bobby Torres, Derek’s older brother, rushed out to the lobby after hearing a commotion at about 6:15 p.m.
“I heard yelling, and I thought they were playing,” Bobby said. “Then I heard screaming, and I ran into the lobby. Then I heard him [Jalarza] say to me, ‘Do you want some of this?'”
The attacker then fled.
Both children were treated at Maimonides Hospital and released.
Jalarza previously was arrested for drug possession in 1989 in Albany; robbery, resisting arrest and fare-beating in Brooklyn in 1996; and credit-card fraud and drug possession last October.