Star (dog)

Star was a mixed-breed female pit bull who was shot by the New York City Police Department in 2012 while she was protecting her homeless owner who was in the midst of a seizure.

On the afternoon of August 13, 2012, Lech Stankiewicz, a 29-year-old homeless man, had a seizure on a sidewalk in the East Village of Manhattan, New York City.

Fearing that Lech was in danger of being hit by traffic, several of the witnesses to the seizure alerted nearby police officers, who were soon on the scene.

During the entirety of the nearly ten minutes caught on video, none of the more than twenty-five NYPD officers and personnel present on the scene offered aid to either Lech or Star.

Star then went into rehabilitation at an undisclosed location and her ownership was transferred to the Mayor's Alliance for New York City's Animals.

Then, Charlie Cifarelli, a native New Yorker residing in Nebraska, tracked Star to the National Greyhound Adoption Center in Philadelphia.

[8] In 2015, Star had no lingering health issues; she was a regular attendee at animal adoption events and Alzheimer's disease awareness functions, and visited Whole Foods Market on behalf of shelter dogs.

Star's struggle garnered international attention and acclaim, raising dialogues regarding attitudes towards pit bulls, shootings of dogs by law enforcement, as well as the role of police departments in creating and revising their policies on how to assess the situations and behaviors of officers confronted by aggressive or non-aggressive dogs before employing lethal force.

[12] In August 2020, long-time documentary filmmaker David Hoffman conducted an interview with Charlie Cifarelli that covered the miraculous story of Star.