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Probation Charge Against Animal Attacker Dismissed

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By TOM BRENNAN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 6, 2008

TAMPA - A judge dismissed a probation violation charge today lodged against Robert Bruce Pettyjohn, who pleaded guilty to being part of a two-month animal cruelty spree in 2001.

Hillsborough Circuit Judge Daniel Perry dismissed the charge lodged against Pettyjohn last month that he violated his 9 p.m. curfew by going to Orlando without the permission of his probation officer.

Pettyjohn and his attorney, James Souza, said it was a misunderstanding. When Pettyjohn was released from prison Oct. 17, he said he was told he had until the following Monday to report in. So instead of seeing his probation officer, he went to visit his family in Orlando and did some shopping at "a super mall."

Perry accepted the explanation, but warned Pettyjohn it would be the last time he would be so understanding.

"You get one opportunity, you're not going to get another one," he said.

Pettyjohn said he understood.

"I want to be a success story," he said.

His parents looked on from the audience. His father, recently released from a hospital, was in a wheelchair.

Pettyjohn, 25, was sentenced in Hillsborough County to three years in prison for using a bow and arrows to shoot bulls in Odessa in 2001. He received a concurrent five-year term in Pinellas County on other cruelty charges.

Authorities said Pettyjohn and Brandon Eldred used a golf club to sodomize and kill a nursing mother llama and gouge the eye out of a baby llama in rural East Lake in Pinellas.

Eldred received a three-year sentence in both counties. He originally was placed on house arrest but was sent to prison after seven violations of the terms of his house arrest.

The llama attack was the culmination of a two-month animal abuse spree in early 2001. The string of incidents included killing one bull and injuring another in an Odessa pasture, torturing a goat to death in East Lake, and using a meat cleaver to slice open the face of a llama off Old Keystone Road in Pinellas. The pair said they were high on drugs and alcohol.

Reporter Tom Brennan can be reached at (813) 259-7698 or tbrennan@tampatrib.com.

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