The Upper West Side man whose pit bulls became the center of a year-long legal saga is back in the headlines — this time after a violent end to a high-speed chase that prosecutors say put three children in danger.
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Joe Columbus, 41, was arrested earlier this month following a May 2 pursuit on the Saw Mill River Parkway that ended with him allegedly crashing his car and being physically wrestled to the ground by Hastings-on-Hudson police, the New York Post reports. Three children — ages 6, 10, and 15 — were in the car at the time, according to police. Columbus was charged with felony reckless endangerment, along with misdemeanors that include fleeing an officer in a motor vehicle, reckless driving, and endangering the welfare of a child. Video of the chase’s end was published by News 12 Westchester.The Post also obtained video, filmed on March 30, of Columbus walking a brown puppy on a leash along Columbus Avenue — the same stretch of the Upper West Side where his pit bulls Rambo and Zooey attacked Penny the chihuahua last May. “Why you taking a picture of me?” Columbus asks in the clip. “You’re Joe Columbus,” the woman behind the camera replies. Columbus then walks away.
The Westchester arrest is the latest twist in a case that has stretched on for more than a year. As we reported when Columbus was taken into custody at a Manhattan Supreme Court hearing in December and sentenced to 90 days behind bars, Judge Phaedra Perry-Bond ordered the contempt sentence after Columbus repeatedly refused to surrender Rambo and Zooey. Both dogs had been declared “dangerous” by the court following the deadly January 2025 Central Park attack on Lauren Block’s Shih Tzu mix Grover and the May 2025 mauling of Penny on the corner of Columbus Avenue and West 85th Street. Columbus told the court that his second cousin had taken Rambo to Canada and that Zooey had been removed from his custody by an ex-girlfriend. Neither dog has been located.
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The May 2 incident also was not Columbus’s first run-in with police on the road. Last summer, sheriff’s deputies attempting to bring him in for ignoring an earlier order to surrender his dogs chased him at high speed through Manhattan after spotting him behind the wheel of a black Jeep Cherokee. According to a sworn affidavit from that incident, Columbus allegedly accelerated toward a deputy’s cruiser in what was described as an intentional attempt to ram it.Meanwhile, Penny’s owner Lauren Claus has launched a new initiative in her dog’s name. Together with Upper West Side dog walker Karen Kramer, Claus this month introduced Penny’s Fund — a financial assistance program for owners of attacked pets, run in collaboration with the Animal Medical Center on the Upper East Side.
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