It always breaks my heart when a dog is killed.. just becoz he's a dog. :'(

Soap Star Suicide Shines Light on Pit Bull Prejudice

The entertainment world was shocked this week at the news of the suicide of 47-year-old actor Nick Santino. The actor, who had appeared on All My Children and The Guiding Light, was found in his apartment after overdosing on pills on his birthday. His suicide note revealed the cause of his tragedy. It read, “Today I betrayed my best friend. Rocco trusted me and I failed him. He didn’t deserve this.”

Rocco was Nick’s pet pit bull, who he had rescued from a shelter several years ago. They lived in a condo on New York’s Upper West Side, and had recently been having run-ins with the condo board. In 2010, the condo board instituted a rule expressly forbidding pit bulls to live in the building. The rule did not affect Nick as he had moved into the building before 2010, but neighbors said the building management harassed him constantly about his dog. Nick was not allowed to use the main elevator or leave the dog alone in the apartment for more than nine hours at a time.

Finally, after threats of fines and constant pressure from neighbors and management, Nick had Rocco put to sleep. The next day, wracked with guilt, Nick took his own life.

The condo board has denied any responsibility in the deaths, and other factors were involved. A veterinarian had told Nick that Rocco had become somewhat more aggressive, though no incidents had been reported. Nick also had suffered from depression. He may have felt particularly bonded to his rescued pit, as he himself had been raised in an orphanage and bounced around from foster home to foster home in his youth. Lately, his acting jobs were becoming more infrequent, and the harassment over his dog may have been what put him over the edge.

It’s impossible to pin the tragedy on any one thing, but it’s hard to ignore the pressure the condo board put on Nick Santino building that pushed him into making a terrible decision—when his dog had been guilty of nothing except being a pit bull. On his last day, Nick gave away Rocco’s bed and rawhide bones to another dog owner in the building and gave the doorman a box of treats to distribute to the rest of the building’s dogs.

Both Rocco and Nick were cremated, and Nick’s family has said they will be interred together.

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