A Brooklyn woman is despondent after a callous car thief drove off with her Audi — also taking “Leo,” the adorable Chihuahua puppy that was still inside.
“It was literally not even a minute,” desperate dog owner Elani Pappas recalled of leaving the little pup inside her car Friday night, outside a gas station on Avenue U in Mill Basin.
“My puppy was in the car and I didn’t want him to get cold,” she said of leaving the car running as she dashed inside the cashier’s office to pay for her gas.
“I threw 20 dollars on the attendant’s desk, and I said ‘20 dollars on pump six,’ and as soon as I was walking out I saw the man sitting in my car and he just took off!” the 23-year-old legal assistant told The Post.
“I tried to run after him, but he started going like 60 miles an hour.”
The thief hung a right on Hill Avenue in Pappas’s dark blue 2010 Audi A4, and disappeared, with Leo barking inside.
“I ran as quickly as I could into the store and I honestly collapsed,” Pappas remembered Saturday night. “The cops came in about three minutes,” and drove her through the neighborhood, but Leo had disappeared with his captor into the frigid evening.
“My dog is like my kid,” Pappas, of Mill Basin, sobbed. “We wouldn’t care if we ever find the car,” she said of the more than dozen family members and friends who helped her hang missing posters well into Sunday morning.
“We just hope that the man didn’t harm him,” she said. “We don’t want the car — we just want Leo.”
The dog, a gift from her boyfriend, is 11 months old and brown and white with a white streak down his nose. “He loves to play — he’s still at that age where he likes to play all the time,” she said. “And he kisses people all the time.”
There is a reward for Leo’s return; anyone with information is asked to call 718-809-2248.