NEW YORK (AP) – A Brooklyn man was arrested Wednesday morning after beating his mother and tossing the family dog out the window of a fifth-floor apartment, authorities said.

The dog, a 55-pound pit bull mix named Gemini, was killed.

Police said the suspect, Alan DeCosta, 31, attacked his 48-year-old mother with a vacuum cleaner before hurling the dog. Charges against him were pending.

Officers responding to a report of an emotionally disturbed person found Gemini at about 8 a.m. on the sidewalk outside the home in the Crown Heights section. They arrested DeCosta after his mother told them he had assaulted her; she was treated for bruises to her neck, head and back.

DeCosta was being held by police Wednesday night. There was no telephone listing for him or his mother at the address provided by police.

Gemini’s body was turned over to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to determine a cause of death.

“Very often, domestic violence strikes not only humans, but pets, too,” ASCPA spokesman Joe Pentangelo said.

In September, a Yorkshire terrier named Poochie died after being thrown out a sixth-floor window during a domestic dispute in Brooklyn.

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