A North Carolina man stole a dog on Jan. 24 before beating it and stabbing it to death and cutting it in half with a chain saw, police said.
Jonathan Maxey Bulluck Jr., 23, of Rocky Mount was charged with felony animal cruelty and felony larceny of a dog, according to investigators with the Wilson County Sheriff’s Office. The dog was a mastiff named Tigger that belonged to Bulluck’s aunt.
WNCN-TV reported that Bulluck claimed the dog jumped on a 2-year-old at his aunt’s house, where he was staying at the time. But his aunt told the sheriff’s office the toddler wasn’t hurt.
The woman said she woke up the following morning to find that Tigger was no longer on its leash. She called her nephew because she recalled him saying he “would’ve killed the dog,” according to a sheriff’s office incident report.
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When the woman was unable to reach Bulluck, she called the police. Investigators later found the dog in a nearby shallow grave.
Deputies have only recovered one half of the dog’s body.
The sheriff’s office said Bulluck stole the dog in the middle of the night, stabbed it to death, then used a chain saw to cut the dog in half and left it in a shallow grave.
Jonathan Maxey Bulluck Jr. “ain’t right in the head”
“They need to do something about him because he ain’t right in the head. He’s crazy,” a neighbor told the station. “He do that to a dog, what’s he gonna do to me?”
Wilson County Sheriff Calvin Woodard said in a statement: “This is the worst, isolated case of animal cruelty that I can recall. The suffering that the dog endured … it was like something out of a horror movie. This was just a heinous act from the beginning to the end. This was just down right, immorally wrong!”
“The offender showed total disregard to his family and their love for ‘Tigger,'” Woodward continued. “This pet had the right to be home, not stolen, suffering and killed. I hope that peace and comfort will one day be obtained by the family who had to endure this tragic loss.”
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Bulluck was being held on a $20,000 bond.