Good shepherds: K-9s help nab stab suspect

from Gene Caferelli

Two heroic police dogs and their handlers helped capture a Rockland man suspected of stabbing his roommate five times at a New Year’s Eve party before nearly choking one of the pooches to death.

Julian Teixeira Demoura, 42, was collared early Tuesday on multiple charges, including attempted murder, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, mistreating a police dog and cruelty to an animal, Rockland police said.

Shortly before 2:30 a.m., Officer Steven Somers arrived at 808 Market St. in response to a report of a disturbance. There, he said, he found people screaming that someone had been stabbed and saw Demoura brandishing a 10-inch kitchen knife.

Somers drew his .40-caliber gun, he said, and Demoura ran out a back door, touching off a nearly four-hour chase that led about a dozen police officers and their dogs through two miles of woods, swamp and snow.

Somers suddenly fell into an ice-covered marsh. Up to his chest in freezing water, he ordered his three-year-old partner, a German Shepherd named Boyar, to attack the suspect. The dog gave chase and, a few seconds later, the officer heard a scream, followed by eerie silence.

Somers eventually made his way out of the icy marsh in the dark, repeatedly calling the dog’s name. Boyar, meanwhile, was wrestling with the suspect, trying to drag him back to his partner, even as Demoura used his shirt and a piece of metal as a winch to try to strangle the courageous canine, Somers said.

After struggling 20 minutes, Boyar lost hold of his prey when Demoura and the dog fell down a steep ravine, the officer said. Covered in the suspect’s blood, Demoura’s shirt still wrapped around his neck, Boyar finally made his way out and obeyed Somers’ order to return to him while other officers and their dogs picked up the chase.

Zar, a Duxbury police pooch, eventually tracked Demoura back to the basement of the house, where the suspect hit him in the head with the handle of a lawnmower before being arrested.

Both dogs escaped serious injury. The suspect was not so lucky.

After being treated at South Shore Hospital for multiple dog bites, Demoura was taken to the Plymouth County House of Correction, pending a dangerousness hearing Monday, police said, and could be deported because he is an illegal alien from Brazil .

The roommate, Sergio Lana, 34, is recovering at Brockton Hospital .