BSO Computer Tech Who Destroyed Defeated Sheriff’s Hard Drive Arrested For Choking Girl
BY BUDDY NEVINS
Just days before Al Lamberti left office in defeat, a computer technician working for the Broward Sheriff’s Office smashed the former sheriff’s hard drive with a hammer.
On Sunday, the same BSO computer geek, Anthony James Petruzzi, was busted for domestic violence.
Anthony James Peruzzi
A deputy arrested Petruzzi just after 2 a.m. The deputy was responding to a “disturbance” in an eighth floor room at the Wyndham Hotel on Deerfield Beach’s beach.
His girlfriend told the deputy that Petruzzi “choked her outside of JB’s by the beach which impeded her breathing and that Petruzzi choked her again between the pier and the Wyndham hotel causing her to push back before nearly passing out.”
A 39-year-old senior applications programmer analyst for BSO since 1999, Pertuzzi was charged with felony domestic battery by strangulation and assault by dating violence, a misdemeanor.
Petruzzi got some notoriety several years ago when it was discovered he had wiped Lamberti’s computer clean before the newly elected Sheriff Scott Israel took office in January 2013.
He said he was acting on orders from a sergeant, according to an investigation by Israel’s staff.
“BSO website developer Anthony Petruzzi told investigators that he ‘was not instructed to destroy the drive in that manner, but he advised that he wanted to make sure he completed the task,’” the Sun-Sentinel wrote.
He was helped by another BSO employee who cut his hand while hammering the hard drive.
Petruzzi was released on $1,500 bond.