TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Woman, Dog Shot By Men In Home Invasion

ADVERTISEMENT

By LISA A. DAVIS

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 24, 2008

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 a.m. Monday.

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, but she froze in her recliner. Then they grabbed her purse and took $130 from her wallet, according to a Pasco County 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 dog.

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

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

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.

No one had been arrested by Monday evening.

Coluzzi remembered 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 Monday, 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," she said.

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.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT