Dog Latches onto Woman’s Shoe in Owner’s Fight Over Subway Seat

An argument over a subway seat escalated into a fistfight, and ended with a pit bull chomping down on a woman’s shoe as a car full of passengers tried to help. 

It was around 4 p.m. on the no. 4 train last Friday when the chaos broke out. Tahsyi King says he and his girlfriend Denise Leon watched as a confrontation quickly escalated.

“It just happened so fast,” said King, who recorded the whole thing.

It started when the owner had his pit bull take a seat on the train. The dog bumped a young woman who was already seated.

“She was like, ‘can you move your dog?'” said King. 

“She’s touching him, and the man is like, ‘Don’t touch my dog,'” said Leon. “So he puts him back on the chair.”

The dispute heated up and turned physical: “She does it again, does it again. This is three times,” said Leon. “The third time, he leans, punches her right on her face. She seen it coming because she hit him back.”

That’s when the dog started grabbing at the young woman’s shoe, biting it. The woman eventually took the sneaker off, and the crowd of straphangers are heard in the video shouting at the owner to stop the dog: “Get the dog off of her!” people scream. 

“She tried to kick it, so thank God it was her sneaker it caught on to,” said Leon.

The dog’s owner simply pulls at the dog as he bites: “As he’s pulling he’s not telling the dog to let go, he’s just pulling the dog.” 

One of the other subway riders is heard yelling at the owner, “You’re not telling the dog to release!” 

Leon said, “Everyone was trying to get him to let go, everyone.”

When the pit bull finally released, the woman “took her shoe off, and [the dog’s owner] threw it at her, and you can see all the other men are like, ‘Really?'” 

The dog owner promptly jumped off at Wall Street, leaving behind an angry crowd of New Yorkers. Leon and King say they’re proud of how everyone came together to help.  

“Because sometimes we don’t stick up but that was a moment where everyone stuck up for her,” said Leon. 

The MTA says non-service animals should be contained on the subway, and the video has been flagged for the NYPD. Witnesses say the passenger who was bitten appeared to be OK.