A Pasadena woman is being held hostage by fear after dognappers have terrorized her with alarming texts and harassing messages about her beloved Rottweiler. Now, she’s speaking out in hopes of not just getting her dog back, but also getting justice.
Jackie Luca told KTLA’s Mary Beth McDade that she and her family are petrified while police haven’t done much about the situation.
“I’m not able to sleep,” she said. “I’m still trying to cope with everything that’s going in my life.”
The last month and a half, according to Luca has been a nightmare, with a strange man lurking outside her Pasadena home and her dog, Rocko, disappearing on Feb. 1 after she let him out for his morning walk.
“He has a tendency to just run out, but he usually comes back and just waits for us in the driveway,” Luca said of Rocko. “This time, as we were locking the doors to leave, I was walking down the stairs, he was gone. He was nowhere to be found.”
Luca and her family plastered fliers around the neighborhood about her missing Rottweiler that included her phone number. That’s when she says she began receiving bizarre and scary text messages.
“They text me, telling me that they have the dog and that they took it to Palm Desert,” she said. “I asked for the address. They provided me with an address.”
Luca told KTLA that she contacted authorities in Palm Desert and had them escort her to the address, but no one at the property knew what she was talking about.
“They called us, telling me, ‘Do you want to hear your dog?’ and you hear them hitting my dog in the background and I could hear my dog crying,” she said.
Shortly after that, the callers started asking for money.
“At first, they asked for $500 and I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m willing to give you that. If not, I can give you $1,000 if that’s what it takes to get my dog back.’ They were like, ‘No, we don’t want that.’ Then I offered $2,000 and they still didn’t want the money.”
Then a person from a second number, which authorities traced back to a man wanted for murdering a little boy, started reaching out.
“He was texting me pictures of my dog, saying that he has the dog and that he’s going to actually just kill it and give me my fur,” Luca said.
Then there’s another man who continues showing up at her home several nights a week. Luca believes the two men are working together.
“Yeah, they’re friends, for sure, because the Eduardo guy calls the other guy Tyrone,” she said. “So, they’re friends.”
As the harassment continues, Luca said the texts have included unsolicited naked pictures and messages that they’ve seen her young daughter walking around the neighborhood.
KTLA has reached out to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department about the case and is awaiting a response.