Lisa Murena, 36, of the Howard Beach section of Queens, tells Inside Edition Digital she had “so much love” for her Pomeranian-Husky mix she named Arya.
A Queens, New York, woman is in tears after her dog was shot and killed by a stray bullet that flew through her parents’ bedroom window and struck her beloved pet.
Lisa Murena, 36, of the Howard Beach section of Queens, tells Inside Edition Digital she had “so much love” for her Pomeranian-Husky mix she named Arya.
“She was the smartest dog I knew. If I went to the laundry room, which is where we kept her treats, if I was doing laundry, she would wait patiently thinking I was going to give her a treat,” she says.
Murena says that she and Arya were “so attached. Every night she slept with me,” adding that they often slept together in the downstairs portion of her parents' home.
Murena got Arya four years after a friend of a friend was getting rid of the pet and couldn't care for it anymore.
“I saw the pictures on Facebook and I said, ‘I have to have her,’ because she was just gorgeous. And then, for four years, she became the pain in my rear end,” she jokes.
While Arya might have found clever ways to get under her owner's skin, their bond was unbreakable, so during the early morning hours of April 22 when the unthinkable occurred, Murena can’t stop getting emotional over it.
“My brother was up at 1:30 in the morning. He heard glass shatter in the bedroom, and then he heard Arya whimpering on the couch. Then I woke up because I heard my brother say, ‘Arya, why are you crying? Arya, why are you bleeding? Why is there so much blood?,’” she recalls. “We didn't hear any gunshots. We didn't hear anything. Then, we all woke up. My dad and I took her to the emergency vet and they did the x-rays around 3:45, the x-rays came back and the doctor's like, ‘There's a bullet in her.’”
Murena explains that Arya would wander from room to room in the family home. On that night, she found herself in the primary bedroom sleeping next to Lisa's dad.
Vets performed surgery on Arya right away to remove the bullet, however, there was significant damage to the 6-year-old dog’s colon as the bullet entered her leg and tore through parts of her body.
Arya stayed in emergency care and was showing some signs of improvement throughout the week and was walking on her own just two days after the traumatic injury.
However, when Murena went to see her beloved pet last Thursday, she would have never expected it to be the last time she saw Arya.
“It was really crazy because it's like she sensed we were all there and she just wanted to come home,” Murena recalls.
Then, just hours later, around 3:30 a.m. last Friday, Arya died of cardiac arrest, Murena says.
Over the weekend, as the whole Murena family mourned the loss of Arya, police arrested 18-year-old Joshua Marte and charged him with criminal possession of weapon-loaded firearm, criminal possession of a weapon-ammo clip and reckless endangerment aggravated cruelty to animals.
The Queens District Attorney’s Office tells Inside Edition Digital he has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Marte’s attorney Joseph Nohavicka tells Inside Edition Digital in a statement, “we are still analyzing the facts as they pertain to Joshua, and we will have a better sense of our defense strategy when we see the indictment, which as of [April 29], we have not seen.”
“This is a tragic loss for the owners of the pet and their family, and a tragedy for the charged 18-year-old young man and his family. Our clients have always been treated fairly by the Queens District Attorney’s Office in the past and we are confident that Joshua will be treated no different,” the statement concludes.
Marte’s mother reportedly told detectives her son had fired guns, which she allegedly said she hid in her freezer. Officers later recovered them, according to ABC 7.
In a criminal complaint obtained by Inside Edition Digital, Marte allegedly told police, “I didn't mean to do anything bad; I didn't want to hurt anybody.”
Murena, who never met Marte and says he and his family have been living on the block for just two years, says she got a restraining order and wants nothing to do with him.
“When I was 18, my parents were going through my drawers looking to see who I was hanging out with and if I was doing drugs. For them, for his parents, they failed. As a parent, you failed. Sorry,” she says. “If that was me, my mother would've turned me in and said, ‘You made your bed, now lie in it.’ That's exactly what my mother would say.”
The bullet-sized hole in her parents' bedroom window serves as a reminder for Murena and her family of what happened and what could have been.
“My dad sleeps less than a foot away from where the bullet went through the window,” she says. “I had just gotten up from that side of the bed around 11 p.m., 11:30 p.m. because I was laying next to my mom and we were talking and on the phone and whatever, but that could have been me. He could have paralyzed one of us. I don't know anything about guns, nor do I care to know anything about guns, but the society that we're living in, there's way too many shootings, way too many going on. Whether it's kids, adults, dogs, any kind of animal, it's just way too much now. I can't take it.”
Murena says she is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from the incident and will be going to therapy. She has also canceled plans she had, including a vacation to Nashville to see country star Morgan Wallen, to mourn the loss of Arya.
“I have PTSD. I know I need therapy now. I know for a fact, and I'm fine to admit it,” she says, “It was my dog and I loved her so much, but I mean, she's replaceable, but it's too soon to get another dog. But my life, my parents' life, my brother's life, it could have been my 7-year-old niece. Their lives aren't replaceable. There's only one of us.
"I won't go to sleep downstairs by myself anymore. I have to sleep upstairs," she continues. "I'm 36 years old and I'm sleeping upstairs. I want to be a kid again and just crawl in between my parents."
