Big Apple gunplay has claimed another victim — a loveable Bronx pooch named Bailey who may now lose a leg thanks to a stray bullet.
The 7-year-old mutt was with his owner and twin pup Pepper outside a Bronx housing project around 3:30 a.m. Monday when he was struck, owner James Wilkerson told The Post.
“We were standing on line to get some cigarettes and all of a sudden shots rang out,” Wilkerson, 62, said. “I heard it and ducked down and I brought my two dogs together. Bailey started to yelp like he got hit.
“They were shooting,” he said. “I don’t know who was shooting. I don’t know why they were shooting. I just got my dogs out there.”
Wilkerson said he didn’t realize at the time that one of his poor pooches was hit in the gunplay.
“I didn’t know until I got out of the area, a yard or two yards,” he said. “I put him on my walker and I could see the blood start messing up his fur.”
The panicked dog owner says he walked up to a cop in the neighborhood for help.
Police rushed Bailey to an Upper East Side animal hospital, where vets gave the pup pain medication before they examined his wound.
“His hip was shattered in so many different places they might have to amputate the leg,” Wilkerson said. “He’ll still be my dog.”
He said Bailey will remain at the clinic overnight to be assessed.
Police had no immediate information on the shooting.
Wilkerson was so shaken by the incident that he asked that the name of the housing project where he lives not be identified.
He was in a grocery store outside the complex when the shooting took place. Pepper was not injured.
He said his two fur babies are mutts, though people have insisted they look like Toy Cocker Spaniels.
