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March 5, 2008 - 10:15PM
Teen: Killing father was 'intentional mistake'
Gary Grado, Tribune
A 15-year-old Mesa boy who admitted shooting his father in the back of the head with a shotgun described the act as "an intentional mistake."
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Hughstan Schlicker also said the anger he felt toward his father festered when the teen's parents took away his computer for sending Internet messages about wanting to kill himself a few weeks before the Feb. 6 shooting, according to a police report and interview transcript released Wednesday.
"Is there such thing as an intentional mistake?" Schlicker asked a Mesa police detective less than two hours after the shooting that left Theodore Schlicker III dead.
"It's like I was there, I wanted, I was so mad at my dad I wanted to shoot him and I couldn't really 'cause when it came down to it he was my dad. And then the dog came by and she tapped my leg and ... if I did look over I probably wouldn't have pulled the trigger."
Schlicker, charged with first-degree murder, later told his mother he had only planned to scare his father to let him know he was angry.
Early in the interview, however, Schlicker said it wasn't an accident and that he had been angry at his father for years. He told a 911 dispatcher he hated his dad, but then later told a detective he didn't.
"But I was mad at him very much, and I wish I could take everything back; I wish this was just a bad dream," he said.
Schlicker didn't claim to have been abused, and there are no public records of any child abuse. The only hint of abuse is contained in a court document in which Schlicker's 18-year-old sister told a judge Theodore Schlicker used to beat her and had held a loaded gun to her head.
The tipping point may have come on Jan. 22, when Mesa police went to the Schlickers' home on South 56th Street after friends reported his posting suicidal statements online.
Before that, Schlicker wasn't allowed to go beyond the gates of his neighborhood, he told police, and when he lost use of his computer he felt cut off from the world. He used to spend hours a day on MySpace.com, communicating with friends in Mesa and as far away as Japan. Losing the computer was "like I was stabbed with a knife," he said.
Schlicker said that after he shot his father, he intended to kill himself, and he called friends to say goodbye. One friend told him to turn himself in instead. Then Schlicker shot the computer.
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