Teen convicted of killing school alpaca escapes jail term on appeal despite "inadequate sentence''

QUEENSLAND'S highest court has found the suspended jail term handed to a teenager who cruelly killed an alpaca at a Brisbane school was terribly inadequate.

Wayne Charles Hartwig dodges the media outside court.

QUEENSLAND'S highest court has found the suspended jail term handed to a teenager who cruelly killed an alpaca at a Brisbane school was terribly inadequate.

However, it ruled the man responsible for that brutality - Wayne Charles Hartwig - should not actually see the inside of a prison cell.

The Court of Appeal in Brisbane unanimously agreed the six month wholly suspended jail term imposed upon Hartwig, now aged 20, for the horrific cruelty meted out to two alpacas at a Brisbane school was manifestly inadequate.

The court found while the sentence given to Hartwig should have been much tougher, it substituted the original sentences with a six month suspended prison sentence and 18-months of strict supervision by way of a probation order.

The altered sentence means Hartwig will be constantly monitored and supervised by the Department of Corrective Services.

Hartwig, then 19, was sentenced to wholly suspended terms after being convicted of two counts of animal cruelty in the Caboolture Magistrates Court on April 30.

The court was told that on October 13 last year, Hartwig and a 16-year-old associate went to the Caboolture State High School's farm, on Brisbane's northern outskirts, where they herded two alpacas and ponies into a yard.

The pair then threw stones at the animals and whipped them with a hose.

The two alpacas where then brutally bashed with a metal fence post.

One alpaca was later found dead by a school employee and the other was so badly injured it had to be euthanased.

In May, Queensland's Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie appealed the six and three month wholly suspended prison terms given to Hartwig for killing one alpaca and injuring the second.

Court of Appeal Justice John Muir, in his written decision, said the impact of the cruelty inflicted on the animals had impacted on "many more people than would be affected by the killing of a family pet''.

"The animals were public property used in the education of children, which was, no doubt in part, directed at inculcating respect for animals and awareness of the need to safeguard their welfare,'' Justice Muir said.

"The animals were destroyed and children were exposed to emotional upset and conduct diametrically opposed to the principles and attitudes which their education was seeking to instil.''

Justice Muir, as part of a series of orders, ruled Hartwig be released immediately from his prison term and ordered into supervision by Corrective Services for a period of 18-months.

Justices Robert Gotterson and Anthe Philippides agreed.