Franklin to honor a 'hero'

Woman asks mayor to recognize neighbor for saving her and her dog from pitbull attacks

FRANKLIN — When Elizabeth Babchak took her Siberian husky, Rayden, out for his nightly walk on May 14, she expected him to do his business on her Main Street driveway and bring him in for bed, as was their routine. All of that changed when she noticed who she thought was her neighbor with his two "pitbull" terriers coming toward her, she explained in a 12-page letter to Franklin’s Mayor, Paul Crowley.

“I assumed they were on leashes,” Babchak wrote in her letter, “until I noticed they weren’t and were coming at me and Rayden.” That was when, she explained in her letter, her “and Rayden’s nightmare began.”

Babchak reports that while one of the pitbulls was biting her dog’s face and neck, the other was behind, attacking the dog’s hind legs and back: “They were barking and biting like vicious, starved animals,” she wrote.

Then she noticed the man who she thought was the animals' owner, Ceasar Delapaz, come to her aid.

Except the owner of the dogs was nowhere in sight. The man coming to her aid was actually another neighbor — Paul Lasky, who had just moved in to a Main Street apartment a few weeks before.

“If it weren’t for Paul Lasky,” Babchak said during a recent phone interview, “my dog wouldn’t have made it.”

Babchak was bitten on the back of her arms, but she said, if not for Lasky's intervention, she also would have sustained greater injuries than she did.

In Babchak's eyes, Lasky is a hero and she asked Franklin's mayor to recognize him as such.

Honoring a 'hero'
In her letter to Mayor Crowley, Babchak asks several times that Lasky be given “a citizen’s award” for his heroic effort in their rescue. Crowley plans to honor Lasky soon.

Lasky said in a phone interview that he is an animal lover and that he’s “not gonna let an animal be attacked.”

What he did, then, when he was out checking his mailbox was instinctual for him — he began to hit the attacking dogs, which he thought were strays, to try and stop their assault.

Finally, after the attack had gone on for 35 to 45 minutes, Lasky said, the dogs’ owner was awakened and came out yelling.

After a moment’s hesitation — which Delapaz later told Lasky was due to his own fear of being bitten — Delapaz pulled one of the dogs off by the skin of her back while shouting for the other to stop, which it did shortly after.

The Franklin police arrived and called an ambulance for Babchak, who was brought to Newton Medical Center and treated for her bites. Babchack’s son, Larry, brought Rayden to Newton Veterinary Hospital, where the dog had an extended stay to be treated for his severe injuries, Babchak’s letter states. The vet bill totaled nearly $1,000, according to Babchak.

While she says she’s a “devoted Catholic” and has forgiven Delapaz, she expects him to pay her medical bills. According to animal control officer John Abate, Delapaz surrendered one of his dogs to the shelter, where it is currently quarantined to make sure it is disease-free, but the remaining dog still haunts Babchak and her husky: “It’s a real torture, every time I go out to walk my dog, the (pitbull) barks at me,” she said.

Abate said the surrendered female pitbull, Diamond, will be put up for adoption once she is deemed to be free of disease: “It’s not on death row,” he said. Abate added that this unfortunate situation could have been avoided if all involved had taken a little more care.

As for Babchak’s hero of the day, Lasky says he would be proud to accept an award from Mayor Crowley.

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