By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday , March 7, 2000 ; A1

| Check out this picture of the little doggie :) |

Somewhere out there is a Virginia motorist with a nightmare case of road rage and a $40,000 bounty on his head, accused of tossing a fluffy white dog named Leo to his death in traffic after a fender bender.

Police in San Jose, Calif., are looking for the driver of a black sport-utility vehicle with Virginia plates who is suspected of yanking Leo, a 10-year-old bichon frise, out of a woman's car and throwing the dog onto a busy road, where he scampered around frantically until he was struck and killed.

Leo's owner admits bumping the man's vehicle with her station wagon as she maneuvered through bumper-to-bumper traffic on a rainy night last month. Sara McBurnett said the man got out and approached her car. When she rolled down her window to apologize, she said, Leo excitedly leapt into her lap as he often did at the bank when the teller would give him a dog biscuit.

"I was going to say 'sorry' and apologize," McBurnett said yesterday, but the man began cursing her, then reached in and grabbed Leo. "He seemed irrational. He didn't take me on. He took on my little dog. What a coward."

An initial reward of $5,000 has mushroomed into pledges of $40,000 from dog lovers around the San Francisco Bay area, where news of Leo's fate has dominated talk radio programs, overshadowing today's presidential primary.

An Internet site that tells the tale was created by a friend of McBurnett's who wants the driver found. The Web site, www.interstice.com/leo, has received more than 18,000 hits. And yesterday, authorities in San Jose said McBurnett and a witness to the Feb. 11 incident are being called in to meet with a police sketch artist.

Police spokesman Rubens Dalaison said finding the driver is complicated by the time that has elapsed. McBurnett, who lives in Nevada and was in San Jose that night to pick up her husband, a pilot, at the airport, raced with Leo to a veterinarian. But it was too late. They spent the night at her mother's home in Marin County, where she reported Leo's death the next morning.

San Jose police learned of the case last week and have put out an all-points bulletin for the Virginia vehicle. Dalaison said investigators are also talking with the witness, who was driving several cars behind McBurnett that night.

"It did occur. But we are only looking at one side of the story," Dalaison said, explaining that police are eager to talk with the driver of the black vehicle.

McBurnett said she was nearing the airport and had slowed to merge with traffic when the black SUV sped around her on the right and cut in front.

A man who said he witnessed the incident told The Washington Post yesterday that he saw the other driver say something to McBurnett, then reach in her car, grab the dog and toss it across the double yellow lines.

"It was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen," the witness said, adding that a white minivan then ran over the dog and kept going, the driver seemingly unaware of what had happened.

The witness, a Web developer from San Jose who agreed to be interviewed on the condition that his name not be used, said that after the dog was hit, the man "got back in his car. It looked like he was kind of debating what to do. He went into the right turn lane and took off."

McBurnett said Leo had been asleep on the front passenger seat but awoke when she lowered her window. After Leo was thrown, McBurnett said, she ran to save him and watched in horror as her pet was struck. "He was severely injured and in extreme pain," she said.

A real estate agent who lives near Lake Tahoe, Nev., McBurnett said she is beginning to get over her loss, thanks to an outpouring of support. After several local newspaper articles last week and an appearance on a popular San Jose radio show, she has received more than 500 e-mails and letters of sympathy. She now has a new bichon puppy, named Stormy, a gift from her husband and mother. "I couldn't come home to an empty house," she said.

Moved by Leo's heart-wrenching story, hundreds of listeners to radio station KGO pledged reward money, and the station enlisted the help of the local humane society.

Marcia Mayeda, the director of community outreach for the Humane Society of the Santa Clara Valley, said the Leo Reward Fund already has $16,000 in cash and promises of $24,000 more. Mayeda said the society will push prosecutors to charge the suspect with a felony for animal cruelty, which in California can be punished by fines of up to $20,000 and time in jail.

The Humane Society of the United States, based in the District, has pledged $2,500 to the reward fund. Media relations director Howard White said the group was shocked at the cruelty of the case.

"This is particularly horrifying," he said. "I've heard of fistfights and that sort of thing, but I've never heard of someone taking out their road rage on a poor little dog."

Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.