-
Joseph Byrnes' longtime friends have trouble believing he'd ever harm one of his beloved dogs -- but note the San Francisco musician's battles with mental illness
On Monday,
SF Weekly broke the disturbing story of a nude man eyewitnesses and police claim hacked his pit bull to death in a Bernal Heights church with a hatchet before telling officers that he was forced to kill the dog as it was possessed by the devil.
Longtime friends of Joseph Byrnes, 41, have offered up a scenario that portrays the unemployed artist and musician as a compassionate -- if greatly disturbed -- pet owner, rather than the blood-soaked dog-killer described by police and witnesses.
Scot Velardo has been Byrnes' friend for more than 15 years and lived with him for a dozen of them. He spoke with Byrnes this week at the psychiatric ward of San Francisco General Hospital. "I don't think Joe would lie to me," Velardo said. "He's bipolar and might have been acting crazy, but he'd never do that to his dogs."
Velardo said Byrnes --
drummer in the local band The Enablers -- told him that his unleashed pit bull, Nickel, ran into the street near the Immaculate Conception church in Bernal Heights and was struck by a hit-and-run driver. Byrnes then claims to have carried the dog to the church in an attempt to heal it -- before realizing the dog was mortally wounded and opting to put Nickel out of his misery with a hatchet. How Byrnes came by the hatchet was left unexplained.
To put it mildly, this story varies greatly from police and eyewitness reports. For one thing, it doesn't explain Byrnes' nudity. "Yeah, he didn't mention that," Velardo conceded.
