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Some thugs who broke into a west-end house Wednesday morning have taken scum to a new depth.
The lowlifes took extra time while lifting $10,000 in electronics from Fred Draeger's house at 161 Street and 99 Avenue to maliciously ransack the house - and beat his dogs and cats.
Hunter may be his name, but Draeger's big Rottweiler cross is a friendly and quiet dog - despite the big goose-egg atop the dog's head where the thieves tried to smash its skull.
The dog was chained up in the backyard sleeping when the sleazes broke in before 4:30 a.m. Wednesday. They also bashed the dog's back legs to the point where Hunter has a hard time walking.
"When I got home, he was bleeding," said Draeger, 52, about what he saw when he returned from his night-shift job distributing newspapers.
The three cats inside the house were also hit and terrorized.
"I'm more hurt about that than anything," he said.
On top of beating the pets, the lowlifes spread mayo, barbecue sauce and cereal all over Draeger's kitchen. They urinated on the carpet, he said, smashed framed pictures and egged the house.
They plugged the sink and bathtub and left the water running, causing further damage.
"I've shed enough tears in the past couple of days," he said, noting he's decided to move out after living there for only about a month.
He said he considers himself an innocent bystander who got "shafted."
"I don't party, I don't do drugs. I go to work, and I go visit my daughter sometimes," he said.
He said that, if need be, he'll take justice into his own hands. If he had caught the perps, "you'd have been writing an obituary instead."
But police investigator Const. Neil Thompson said the investigation is still ongoing.
Some people close to Draeger's family have been interviewed, but Thompson said no concrete leads have developed so far. He's still waiting for fingerprints to come back from the lab.
He called the crime "plain rotten."
"I'm in my seventh year of the job, and I can count on my hand the times people have gone to that extreme ... trashing."