PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A 50-year-old Bucks County man who shot, then burned his dog on a barbecue will spend up to four years in state prison, after telling police he did it because he was “having a rough day.”
Nikolay Lukyanchikov has been sentenced to between two and four years in state prison after he pleaded guilty to receiving stolen property, aggravated cruelty to animals, and related charges.
Common Pleas Judge Raymond McHugh also told Lukyanchikov he could never own, possess or care for an animal again.
On April 30, 2021 at about 7:10 a.m., police were called to his home on Holly Knoll Road in Northampton Township for a report of both a couch on fire and a firepit.
They found Lukynachikov “highly intoxicated” while sitting on a couch, throwing fake $100 bills into a fire pit and spraying it with lighter fluid. Officers also found a 9 mm handgun which they later said fired blanks.
When police put out the fire, they found a dead dog on a barbecue grill with an apparent gunshot wound.
Prosecutors said Lukyanchikov’s blood-alcohol content was .25, and he couldn’t speak.
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A woman in the home told police that Lukyanchikov shot the dog because she went upstairs. The woman said she barricaded herself in a room because she was scared.
Police later found blood on the wall of the stairwell and throughout Lukyanchikov’s bedroom, along with shell casings and other firearms.
Lukyanchikov later told police “he shot the dog to put it out of its misery, but also because he was ‘having a rough day.’”
He was legally not allowed to have a gun because of an involuntary commitment in 2011. He also had tried to buy a gun in 2019 but was declined, and also asked his roommate to buy one for him but she refused.
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Police say he stole the gun from his friend’s widow one week before he shot the dog.
Prosecutors said the 8-year-old dog was named Bonanza, and was rescued in 2019 from a racetrack in Macau, China. The National Greyhound Adoption Program in Philadelphia took care of the dog before Lukyanchikov adopted him and renamed him Preacher.
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