After months of his neighbors’ complaints about his Pit Bull named Rocco, soap actor Nick Santino had the healthy dog put to sleep Tuesday, the New York Post reports.

Nick Santino & Rocco

In 2010, his building at 1 Lincoln Plaza announced strict new dog regulations, including a ban on Pit Bulls. The ban didn’t apply to Pit Bulls already in the building, but friends and neighbors said Santino began to be harassed.

“People were complaining about his dog,” said neighbor Kevan Cleary, 63, an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School. “It was open season on him.”

Neighbors said a tearful Santino brought dog treats to the building’s doorman and said: “Give these to the other dogs. Rocco is no more.”

The last phone call he made was to a former girlfriend at 2 a.m. Wednesday. Later that day, police found his body in his bedroom.

Nick Santino was part of the first team to lead search & rescue on World Trade Center 9-11-2001. He used his ConEdison Engineering ID & Asbestos Certification to gain access, IMDb notes.

Santino, who has appeared on “All My Children” and “The Guiding Light” had overdosed on pills.

Sandra Tarr mourned her dear friend on Facebook.

“Nick Santino, you were so dear and special to me and when you called me on Tuesday and cried and told me you didn’t want to live anymore, I should have called 911,” she wrote.

Obviously, there’s a lot more to this story…but two things are clear.

1) If you call someone a “dear friend” and they tell you they are going to commit suicide, take them seriously.

2) Pit Bulls are not innately bad. The fact-of-the-matter is, no dog is a bad dog. In the right hands, any breed can be raised to be well behaved and friendly with the proper training. Period.

What 1 Lincoln Plaza could have and should have done was to have banned dogs over a certain weight, not by breed. And stand by their grandfather clause. That’s how the rest of the country does it!