LAWRENCE COUNTY, Ind. — A Lawrence County man faces charges after police say he killed and mutilated his father, who he believed to be a robot.
A probable cause affidavit filed in the case against Shawn Hays says deputies responded to a welfare check on December 20 at Hay’s Mitchell home. Police say they got a call from someone who said Hays told them that Hay’s father was turned into a robot, so Hays shot and mutilated him.
The call comes about a week after various Facebook accounts linked to Hays detail a variety of alarming and troubling thoughts. In one post, written only a week before the deadly shooting, Hays declared distrust in his father writing that he believed someone had kidnapped or murdered his father and replaced him with “a robot that looks like my dad.”
The document details that when police arrived, they saw Hays trying to back out of the driveway. When they asked about his father, police say Hays told them that it wasn’t his father, but was instead a robot that looked like his father.
Police asked Hays where his father was, and the document said Hays gestured toward the residence, directly behind the vehicle. Police say he got combative when they asked him to get out of the truck.
During the argument, the document says Hays told police “It’s a robot that looks like a human…laying over there. I had to shoot at it to destroy it.”
After arrested Hays, officers found his father in front of the residence, dead from apparent gunshot wounds to his head and chest. The document said his body was found to be mutilated and partially dismembered.
When interviewed, the document said Hays admitted to shooting, mutilating, and partially dismembering the robot, who looked like his father.
The document said there were also apparent attempts to destroy physical evidence. Hays was preliminarily charged with:
- murder
- aggravated battery
- reckless homicide
- domestic battery
- battery
- abuse of a corpse
- criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon
- pointing a loaded firearm
- obstruction of justice
- resisting law enforcement