A 5-week-old puppy was stolen at knife-point on a Chicago Transit Authority Orange Line train Tuesday.
Police said the theft happened around midnight in the 3500 block of South Leavitt near the 35th and Archer Orange Line station.
The puppy’s owner, James Johnson, told NBC Chicago he had been approached by two men while riding the train with his new puppy in a carrier placed in a seat beside him.
Johnson believes he may have been targeted because he had a guitar with him, but instead the robber took the dog, who he had recently named Lisa Bonet.
“[One of the men] got tough with me and pulled a knife and tried to stab me,” Johnson said.
The is when Johnson says he jumped back in an attempt to protect himself and in that time they grabbed both the puppy and his guitar before running off the train at Archer and Leavitt.
Johnson chased after the criminals but could not get his dog back. The men were last seen running southwest on Archer Avenue.
Local
A short while later, flight attendant Christopher Abair says he was approached by a man on another Orange Line train who was desperately trying to sell a black and white dog resembling Johnson's.
“The puppy seemed distressed, the puppy was whimpering and I offered him what I had on me,” Abair told NBC Chicago. “I said, ‘I have around $100, can you take that?’”
Abair says the man denied that amount and added that he would “only take $500 cash because this is a special breed of dog.”
Realizing the strange nature of the encounter, Abair took pictures of the dog after the man threw the puppy and it’s carrier to the floor.
“I took photos and I just didn’t know what else to do,” Abair said.
Police said no one was in custody as of Wednesday evening and an investigation is ongoing.
Johnson says his Lisa Bonet is a mixed breed dog that was just a puppy. He is begging anyone who knows where it is to bring it back to him.
