Geoffrey Peterson who is charged with animal cruelty in Sequatchie County.Geoffrey Deane Peterson will be held in jail without bond until his next court date on April 28, according to Sequatchie Circut Court records.
Peterson is accused of abusing his elderly father, hoarding more than 60 animals in squalid conditions and using his license as a nurse practitioner to prescribe copious amounts of narcotics.
The 55-year-old man turned himself in to the Sequatchie County Sheriff on Monday after he skipped out on a $10,000 bond that stemmed from his Dec. 19 arrest, when authorities raided his feces-filled home in Dunlap and found dozes of animals in poor condition.
He will remain in the Sequatchie County jail until his next court date on April 28.
After the animal raid, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration raided a pair of medical clinics in Hixson that Peterson ran as a licensed nurse practitioner in January. Former patients said Peterson was running “pill mills” out of the clinics — prescribing powerful narcotics for nonmedical reasons.
DEA officials would not confirm the nature of the investigation.
After the raids, Peterson’s medical license was suspended under an emergency order by the Tennessee Board of Nursing. The order of suspension listed 17 reasons why Peterson presents an “extreme and untenable danger to his patients and the public of Tennessee.”
Authorities also searched a Hixson home connected to Peterson, and they found the man’s 88-year-old father, Walter, in poor condition. Peterson was subsequently charged with willful abuse and neglect of an elder on Jan. 23, but authorities could not find him to book him and he had been wanted since.