A Brooklyn judge has released a man charged with attempted murder after a stray bullet struck a service dog walking with a woman who has Down syndrome.
The defendant, 29-year-old Adrian Benitez, was arraigned on charges of attempted murder, assault, weapons possession, reckless endangerment and aggravated cruelty to animals. According to Western Journal, prosecutors requested bail be set at $150,000, but Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Janice Robinson instead allowed Benitez to walk free on a simple promise to return to court.
Benitez is scheduled to appear again on Nov. 24, meaning he will remain at liberty for months despite the severity of the allegations. The case has quickly become another flashpoint in New Yorks ongoing debate over lenient bail practices and the public-safety consequences of progressive criminal-justice policies.
Police said the shooting occurred at about 5:45 p.m. on Aug. 19 near Green-Wood Cemetery in the Greenwood Heights neighborhood. Benitez allegedly drew a handgun during an argument with a man who had been speaking with a woman, and opened fire in a dispute that could easily have turned deadly.
The intended human target was not struck, but the bullet found another victim. Instead, the round hit Honey, a 7-year-old Labradoodle who serves as a service dog for 64-year-old Teresa Pezzolla, a woman with Down syndrome who depends on the animal for daily support.
A veterinarian later removed a .22-caliber bullet from Honey, and the dog survived the ordeal after emergency care. Pezzollas nephew told the New York Post he was thankful the shot did not hit his aunt, underscoring how close the incident came to becoming a homicide rather than an animal-cruelty case.
Benitez was taken into custody Tuesday morning, and court records cited by the Post indicate he had no prior unsealed arrests. That clean public record, however, does little to diminish the gravity of firing a weapon on a city street and allegedly endangering both an innocent woman with disabilities and bystanders in a busy neighborhood.
Judge Robinson, elected in 2024 after a career as an insurance lawyer, was only recently assigned to the criminal bench. Her short tenure is already drawing scrutiny, as her rulings appear to reflect the broader ideological shift in New Yorks judiciary toward minimizing pretrial detention even in serious violent cases.
In a review of 13 of Robinsons cases, the Post found that eight defendants were released without bail including two others charged with attempted murder while the remaining five received relatively low bail amounts. A law-enforcement source, frustrated by the pattern, complained that the judge was treating dangerous offenders as if they were petty thieves, warning, Does it have to be a child in a stroller next time?
Soft-on-bail politics did not materialize by chance; they are the direct result of electoral choices and a progressive legal culture that prioritizes offenders comfort over community safety. New York voters put Robinson on the bench, and the consequences of that decision are now playing out in real neighborhoods where bullets do not always find their intended targets.
For years, city leaders and activists have portrayed pretrial detention as the scandal, while treating rising street violence as little more than background noise. When a leftist judge cuts loose a defendant charged with attempted murder after a service dog takes the bullet, it is not a malfunction of the system but rather the system working as designed.
Democracies ultimately get the officials they elect, and Brooklyn elected this one, with all that entails for victims and law-abiding residents. The next hearing is set for November, Honey is recovering from her wounds, and the man accused of firing the shot that nearly killed a vulnerable womans lifeline is, for now, not in a cell.
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