Published: Wednesday, August 25, 1993
Section: LOCAL
Page: 1B
Among the rich at Gables Estates, a dog's life became a shooting affair
Tuesday.
A physician grabbed his pistol and fired off a shot -- after his next-door
neighbor tossed his pooch into the bay.
Coral Gables police charged Dr. Manuel Hernandez with aggravated assault. After five hours in jail, he posted a $5,000 bond and was freed.
Both he and the target of his ire, Neal McCool, live on gracious water-front Leucadendra Drive in homes assessed, respectively, at $1.1 million and $1 million.
The way McCool told it to the cops, the doctor owns two large muscular Akitas named Cinnabar and White Sox.
Last year, he said, one killed the puppies of his two Rottweilers, Bonnie and Clyde. And again Monday, McCool said, Cinnabar attacked Bonnie.
So at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, when Cinnabar came sniffing around again, McCool got his .38-caliber revolver. With a rake in the other hand, he said, he pushed Cinnabar off the dock into the bay.
That's when the doctor, McCool said, pointed a .357 magnum
from his own dock.
"I was terrified," McCool said. "I ran across the yard. He pointed the gun at me and said, 'I'm going to kill you.' " Police said he fired once. He didn't hit anyone.
Hernandez's wife, Margarita, declined to discuss the matter -- except to say the dog survived the dunking, and that it wasn't the first time McCool pitched Cinnabar into the bay.
The family attorney, Miguel de la O, said Hernandez did not aim at McCool and he will contest the criminal charge.
Hernandez, 49, is chief of the pulmonary division at Mercy Hospital.
McCool, 44, is a onetime telecommunications technician who now works in real estate development. In 1991, he was elected to the Cocoanut Grove Village Council.
Said Coral Gables Sgt. Mitch Fry of the doctor, "I guess when he saw him throw the dog into the water, he lost it."