Ind. father arrested after son is found shot dead, clutching baseball bat

LAWRENCE, Ind. (TCD) — A 53-year-old man was arrested over the weekend after he allegedly killed his son during a physical altercation.

According to WXIN-TV, on Sunday, Aug. 13, at approximately 11 p.m., Lawrence Police Department officers responded to an apartment on the 7100 block of Foxborough Drive and located 27-year-old Oliver Johnson unresponsive on the floor. Paramedics arrived and later pronounced him dead.

Lawrence Police investigators reportedly said there was an “altercation between close family members,” which resulted in Johnson getting injured. His cause of death was initially listed as a single gunshot wound.

Detectives subsequently identified Oliver’s father, Rolf Johnson, as the primary suspect, though he was not at the scene when police got there. An office in a nearby town saw Rolf Johnson’s vehicle about an hour later and pulled him over. He was booked into the Marion County Jail on a murder charge and is being held without bond.

According to court documents cited by WXIN, Oliver was on the kitchen floor holding a wooden baseball bat. He had sustained head trauma and was pronounced deceased at 11:10 p.m.

Inside the home, Marion County Crime Lab officials located an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun lying on a cot near Oliver’s body. The crime lab team found a bullet casing and a hole in the apartment wall.

The affidavit says Rolf Johnson contacted his other son and told him to call police because Oliver “tried to hit him, so he hit him back, possibly with a hammer, there is blood everywhere, and he killed him.”

WXIN reports, however, the coroner said Oliver had two gunshot wounds on his body.

The other son went to the apartment and provided police with information about his father’s vehicle. When they located him, he reportedly had blood on his pants.

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