An 11-year-old boy and his long-haired Chihuahua are a heroic, crime-fighting duo that helped save his mom from a would-be rapist.
Dennis Morfe told The Post his pooch Lian was the first to sound the alarm when a creep sneaked into his family’s upper Manhattan apartment Wednesday, signaling there was something amiss and launching the sixth-grader to his mom’s bedside.
“First I heard the dog barking and my mom screaming,” Dennis said of the harrowing attack.
“I see this guy grabbing my mom and stuff, so I come up to him and I said, ‘Get off my mom!’ ”
The monster had begun ripping the clothes off Digna Rivera Ruiz but quickly fled the apartment — apparently scared off by Dennis and the pint-sized Lian, according to police, who were still searching for the fiend on Friday.
Dennis says full credit should go to the Chihuahua.
“I just want to say that our dog is our hero, even though sometimes he has his bad side, you know,” Dennis said. “He likes peeing everywhere” but “he still saved our lives.”
The predator entered the family’s basement apartment in Fort George at about 5 a.m. through a door left slightly ajar by Dennis’ taxi-driver dad, who had headed out for a moment to re-park his cab, cops said.
As soon as the creep entered the pitch-black apartment, the tiny but feisty Lian began to bark up a storm, family members recounted.
That woke Ruiz, 42, who got up from her bed in the living room and was immediately grabbed by the stranger.
The attacker threw her to the bed but Lian’s persistent barking had also awakened Dennis.
The kid fearlessly leaped from his own bed and confronted the stranger, interrupting the attack.
“He tried to pull her pants down — in front of everybody!” Dennis remembered angrily. “I tried stopping him.”
But the lowlife flung the kid head-first into a column in the living room, according to his dad, Dionice Morfe Pina.
“My son, my baby,” said Pina, 45. “He hit his head.”
Lian’s incessant barking got the attention of the couple’s adult daughter and son-in-law, who rushed in from a back bedroom, shouting, “Leave her alone!” With the tables turned against him, the attacker finally fled.
“All was said and done by the time the husband returned,” one police source said.
Now, the dad is just as proud of little Lian as he is of his son.
“He’s my superman,” Pina said of the pocket-sized pooch.
Since his brief burst of bravery, the poor pup has been too frightened to come out of the living-room closet.
The mom, a home health aide, is shaken as well, telling The Post in Spanish, “I don’t even know how to explain the way I feel — but I don’t feel good.”
Police have released surveillance video of the suspect in hopes of finding him.
Additional reporting by Stephanie Pagones and Tina Moore