‘JUST GET OUT’ |

Columbus woman rebuilds life after husband allegedly stomped dog to death

COLUMBUS —Jul. 20—In the end, the dying dog tried to comfort her distraught owner.

Loren Van Pelt’s tears mixed with her battered dachshund Penny’s blood and saliva as her friend Jennifer Reese frantically drove to a veterinarian, in lunch-hour traffic, in midtown Columbus.

Every time the maimed dog turned her head, blood splattered inside the car as Loren sobbed, trying to comprehend what had just happened.

Sensing her owner’s distress, Penny wagged her tail and licked Loren’s face. When she looked at Loren, she still had bright, brown loving eyes, a gaze Loren would never forget.

As she cradled Penny in her arms, the dog suffered frequent seizures, the result of extensive brain damage from allegedly being stomped and beaten by Loren’s soonto-be ex-husband, Charles Van Pelt, who’s now jailed for felony animal cruelty.

Loren did not know it at the time, but she was about to start a new life.

MOVING ON

Loren Van Pelt made that frantic ride to the vet on Jan. 6. She remembered Penny’s last hours during an interview months later, outside the midtown pet salon where she once worked with Jennifer, a groomer who has since started her own business.

Loren has also moved on, left the Britt Avenue home she shared with Charles, found a new job, and filed to divorce her husband — the papers delivered to him in jail.

She agreed to an interview with the Ledger-Enquirer because she wanted other women to know they can do what she did, she said: Get out of a bad relationship, and don’t risk further heartbreak.

Loren moved on partly because she got support after people read about the case. Jennifer set up a GoFundMe page to help Loren hire a divorce attorney.

“It breaks my heart to know that things had to go this far for me to see things in a new light,” Loren said. “Had it not been for everyone’s support, I don’t know where I would have ended up. I don’t know what I would have done.”

Looking back now, she believes her marriage was an emotionally abusive relationship, with warning signs she should have heeded before her dog was crushed.

Her estranged husband had a bond hearing May 3 in Muscogee Superior Court.

Loren did not want him released on bond, and neither did the prosecutor and animal lovers who read about the case and petitioned the court to keep Charles Van Pelt in jail.

The case has been assigned to Judge Ron Mullins. The prosecutor is Kimberly Schwartz. The defense attorney is Anthony Johnson.

Schwartz and Johnson are now negotiating a plea deal for Charles, who is expected to serve more time in jail, should he agree to plead guilty.

‘THAT KILLER DOG’

Loren’s husband of seven years told her he had to injure Penny to break up a fight between the 9-year-old dachshund and her kennel mate, a 16-year-old half-blind chihuahua named Abby.

That day he dropped Loren off at work at noon, and seven minutes later, his brother, their next-door neighbor, called and told her to rush home: Charles was kicking her dog.

Jennifer drove her back, and when they arrived, they found Charles standing in the pen, starring blankly at the dying dog.

“There’s that killer dog,” he said as Jennifer pushed passed him to get Penny. Loren turned to follow Jennifer to the car, but Charles grabbed her in a bear hug she had to struggle free from, she said.

Later that day, when she returned home after leaving Penny with the vet, she fell to her knees in the backyard, sobbing.

“I sat there in shock in my yard for like three hours, still covered in her blood, just sitting there not knowing what I was doing, what was happening, what happened.”

Penny lived about 30 hours before the vet told Loren the dog was essentially brain dead, having repeated seizures. She died in Loren’s arms, the light in her eyes gone.

CATCHING COVID

Soon after Penny’s death, Loren caught COVID-19 and was sick in bed for 10 days, ruminating: “I kept thinking to myself, ‘This just doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t sound right. Something is not right.’”

That’s when she decided to review footage from a security camera her husband and his brother had mounted over the dog pens in the backyard, after some thefts.

It recorded her husband as he calmly walked into the pen, closed the gate, and then stomped on something, bracing himself against the chain-link pen.

The camera angle was too high to show more than his head and shoulders, but it showed him raising a heavy glass bowl and slamming it down. Pieces of broken glass littered the pen, explaining Penny’s horrific cuts, Loren said.

It was a heavy glass mixing bowl she had used for dog water, because the dogs couldn’t turn it over, she said.

When she confronted her husband with this evidence, he asked how she could tell he stomped the dog if she couldn’t see his feet. And he wondered why she didn’t trust him, and whether she was mentally OK.

“He was like, ‘Well, I’m not a monster. I’m not an animal abuser.’ And I said, ‘Well, you kind of look like one to me.’”

‘RED FLAGS’

Her husband had previously said how much he disliked the dog, jealous of how his wife adored her, Loren said.

“I can’t wait for that bitch to die,” he muttered once, coming home from work at an automotive plant and finding Penny cuddled with Loren. She asked whether she had heard him right. He denied saying it.

“There were so many red flags,” Loren said. “He always said that I loved my animals more than I loved him, and that I make him feel inferior with the dogs... He stated that over and over to me, and I just thought that it was just immaturity.”

Penny’s death forced Loren to reevaluate a relationship that began 11 years ago in high school.

Both she and Charles are in their late 20s now. They met through mutual friends online. A few dates led to a relationship and then, four years later, to marriage in July 2015 — a few months after they adopted Penny.

Charles was with Loren when she got the dog outside a PetSmart store, and helped choose her name. She thought she could trust him, she said.

She now thinks she was “gaslighted,” she said: “I really didn’t know what that term was, until I decided to get out of the relationship.”

Gaslighting means to manipulate someone with false information, to make them question their reality or their sanity.

Looking back, Loren recalled how Charles demeaned her, telling her she was overweight and unattractive.

“A lot of people think abuse is just physical, and it’s really not,” she said. “Emotional abuse is a real thing, and it’s just as bad as anything else.”

THE EVIDENCE

Convinced Charles killed her dog, after reviewing the video, Loren planned her escape: She packed a bag with some essentials and told him she was going to her parents’ home for a family movie night.

She did not go back until he was in jail.

Jennifer contacted the police Jan. 29, and gave them the surveillance video. Charles was arrested Feb. 5.

If convicted under Georgia’s aggravated animal cruelty law, he’s facing up to five years in prison and a $15,000 fine.

“I want him to do time, and I want that felony to stick,” Loren said, “I really wish he would do the maximum, but I know he’s not going to get that.”

During his Feb. 10 preliminary hearing in Columbus Recorder’s Court, Charles was represented by the public defenders office but attorneys there had a conflict of interest, so attorney Anthony Johnson was assigned to the case.

Johnson said his client had no history of family violence or animal abuse, before this.

LOOKING AHEAD

Loren so far is still living with her parents, now, but said she will find a new home soon.

“I’ve just been keeping to myself,” she said. She doesn’t want to see Charles again, and hopes to move to where he can’t find her with her three remaining dogs. “All three of them are thriving,” she said.

Among those who have rushed to her aid are other women with similar experiences: “There’s a lot of people that reached out to me on social media, saying that ‘what you went through was very difficult, and you shouldn’t blame yourself for anything that happened, because I’ve been there.’ You know, people have been in awful relationships.”

Others on social media blamed her for not leaving Charles earlier: “I can’t believe she ignored all those red flags. She should be ashamed of herself,” Loren said one posted.

“There’s been a lot of ugliness,” she said. “The ugly stands out.”

Amid all the ugly criticism, memories of the light in her lost dog’s eyes lingered in her mind.

Among those touched by her story were two local artists who gave her portraits of Penny. One hangs on the wall by her bed, where she sees it every morning.

“Every time she looked at me, you could just feel the love and you could see it, and that portrait really captured that,” she said.

She hopes other women will take her advice: Don’t stay in a bad relationship. Don’t wait for it to get worse, and don’t blame yourself.

“It’s not worth having to go through the things I went through. Just listen to yourself, and no matter what, you’re going to have support, you’re going to be loved,” she said. “Just get out.”