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'He Gave His Life Protecting Me,' Home Invasion Victim Says Of Dog

News Channel 8 photo by DAVE KRAUT

Cathleen Coluzzi talks about her injuries in a Monday home invasion during which two intruders kicked down her door, shot her and killed her beloved boxer, Baxter.

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By LISA A. DAVIS | The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 23, 2008

Updated: 06/23/2008 05:50 pm

HUDSON - Cathleen Coluzzi was sitting in an easy chair, folding laundry before going to bed when two men kicked down the door to her studio apartment in a pole barn about 2 this morning.

Their faces were mostly covered by hooded sweatshirts, and they held guns, she said.

"Give me money. Give me money," the intruders screamed.

They ordered her to the floor — she froze in her recliner instead — and grabbed her purse and took $130 from her wallet, according to a sheriff's office report.

"I was screaming bloody murder," Coluzzi said.

She grabbed her cell phone and tried to call her former boss, who lives in a house on the property. The intruders attempted to stop her. She kicked. Her dog, Baxter, attacked, biting at least one of the men, said Coluzzi, who is 40 and disabled from a construction accident.

While one of the men hit Baxter in the head with the gun, the other threatened to shoot the canine.

Coluzzi started throwing things at the robbers — a glass holder and candle, aerosol cans, anything she could get her hands on — until they retreated from her Parkwood Acres home.

At some point they fired their guns at her, possibly a .22-caliber and a pellet gun, and a bullet pierced her thigh.

Somehow, a friend staying with her slept through the commotion, she said.

Then Coluzzi heard a yelp from outside.

Baxter, her 69-pound boxer, had been shot between the shoulder blades, severing his spine.

At first Coluzzi had hoped to bring him home from the animal hospital, even if she had to diaper him and carry him around for the remainder of his life. But then Baxter's condition worsened and he had to be euthanized.

"He was agonizing, struggling for every breath," his grieving owner said.

Baxter turned 8 in May. He had been part of her family since her two sons, now grown, were young.

"I looked at him like a third child," Coluzzi said. "… He gave his life protecting me."

Only after her pet was gone would she go to Morton Plant North Bay Hospital to have her leg treated.

Afterward, she went to the home of one of her sons and likely will stay for some time.

"I'm petrified to go back there, especially without Baxter to protect me," Coluzzi said of her apartment.

Nobody had been arrested by this evening.

Coluzzi remembers seeing two similarly dressed men a few days ago outside her apartment in the part of the building where her landlord keeps his tools. She yelled at them and they ran, hopping over the fence. Nothing was taken and the incident wasn't reported to deputies.

Later today, Coluzzi continued wondering why she was targeted.

"I'm living in a pole barn," she said. "I mean, what do they expect me to have?"

The only thing of value she owned was Baxter, Coluzzi said. "They took a little piece of me."

But part of Baxter will live on. Not long ago, the purebred sired a litter of puppies, and they're expected to be born in the next couple of weeks.

Reporter Lisa A. Davis can be reached at (727) 815-1083 or ldavis@tampatrib.com.

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