John Jefferson
Left inset: Robert Dickson (Washington County Detention Center). Main: North Bernice Drive in Fayetteville, the residential area where the shooting unfolded (Google Maps).
Cops in Fayetteville, Arkansas, allege that a son murdered his father in a bedroom closet with a shotgun over the weekend even though the suspect called 911 and claimed he had only returned fire and defended himself.
The Fayetteville Police Department said Monday that 29-year-old Robert Dickson called 911 on Sunday afternoon and said that a “dispute” with his father had turned deadly in a residence on North Bernice Drive.
The story from Dickson, cops said, was that the argument of unspecified origins got so heated that both he and his father “produced firearms and a shooting ensued.”
But the evidence at the scene — or a lack of evidence closely backing the suspect’s alleged account — now have him accused of first-degree murder and booked into the Washington County Detention Center on a $750,000 bond, jail records reviewed by Law&Crime show.
“After a swift and thorough investigation, Dickson was found to have shot the man without legal justification and with a purpose of killing him,” police said.
In short, there does not appear to be any dispute that Dickson shot his father and killed him, so the question moving forward is whether or not it was justified by self-defense.
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A report from local NBC affiliate KNWA said that Dickson told police that he grabbed the shotgun after his father, armed with a pistol, shot first.
“I grabbed my shotgun and shot back at him. He shot at me first. He was shooting his gun through my door from his room,” the defendant allegedly claimed.
After cops got to the scene around 3 p.m. Sunday, they reportedly found Dickson’s father shot to death in his bedroom closet, suggesting he was killed at close range and possibly while hiding from his son. While the report said that there was a pistol in the closet, there weren’t bullet holes in doors. Instead, the report said, there were tell-tale signs of bullet holes — two of them — with the bullets “travel[ing] through the victim’s room into a wall in the stairway.”
The defendant is accused of then entering his father’s bedroom for the unlawful purpose of killing him.
Authorities have not yet identified the victim by name or age.
Records show that Dickson is expected to make an initial appearance in court on the morning of Sept. 18. A second court date is so far set for Oct. 14.
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