Plant City attacker kills girls' FFA show piglets By AMBER MOBLEY, Times Staff Writer Published October 21, 2007
The 13-year-old twins find them stabbed to death in their pens, with one mutilated.
PLANT CITY - At first, twin sisters Leann and Lindsey Farkas thought their show pigs had been fighting.
As they approached the pigs' pen to feed them Saturday morning, they noticed Dixie's black and white skin was stained red with blood.
Rebel lay near, her reddish hide masking any apparent injuries.
The pigs' wooden pen was still padlocked, but the mosquito netting was torn down.
When the girls got closer, they realized the truth.
Rebel and Dixie were dead.
"Fear just struck in them," said their grandmother, Judy Johnson.
"Leann was hysterical, just screaming when she told me," she said. "My heart just bled."
The little pigs, about 6 to 8 weeks old, were stabbed to death, according to Plant City police who responded to the call at 14201/2 South Alexander St. Dixie was mutilated, an approximately 3- by 3-inch piece of shoulder missing, Johnson said.
"When you see something like that, it's like, 'What happened?'" she said. "You wonder what was in the cage."
Johnson has an idea: a cruel-hearted person.
"It's one thing to be a cruel person, which this person had to be, but they did this to kids," she said.
Leann and Lindsey are 13 years old. The Tomlin Middle schoolers just bought the pigs on Oct. 6 and planned to show them as an FFA project for school at the Florida Strawberry Festival in a few months.
They even helped build the pigs' pen.
As the Farkas girls try to decide if they'll buy new pigs to show, the Plant City Police Department is asking anyone with information in the pigs' deaths to call authorities at 813-757-9200.
In September, another pig was killed and a 400-pound pig in Sun City named Big Pig was also stabbed. Big Pig survived, and two suspects were arrested in the attack.
