A US father has walked into a Minnesota police station “covered in blood”, telling police he beat a man with a shovel 15 to 20 times and “finished him off” with a moose antler, according to US court documents.
Levi Axtell, 27, was taken into custody on Friday and charged with second-degree murder over the death of Lawrence V. Scully, 77.
Scully had previously been convicted of molesting a six-year-old girl in 1979.
Mr Axtell told police he was suspicious of Scully and believed he was stalking his toddler daughter at her daycare, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by Fox News Digital.
The dad said he had known Scully for a long time “and believed him to have sexually offended against children in the past”, the criminal complaint read.
“[Mr Axtell] said he had observed [Scully] parked in the vehicle at locations where children were present and believed he would reoffend.”
Back in 2018, Mr Axtell filed an order of protection against Scully, which was initially granted but dropped several weeks later. It’s unclear why the order of protection was dropped.
On March 8, shortly before 5pm, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office received a 911 call from a citizen who watched someone pull into Scully’s driveway, “smash a vehicle” and “then run into the house,” according to the affidavit.
“The citizen then heard screaming coming from the house,” the affidavit said. Then about a minute later the person told the emergency services operator the man was driving to the police station.
That’s when Mr Axtell allegedly told police what happened.
Mr Axtell was covered in blood and “put his hands on his head and said that he had murdered [Scully] with a shovel,” according to the affidavit.
Deputies from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office found Scully in his Grand Marais, Minnesota, home “obviously dead from the serious nature of his head wounds,” according to the criminal complaint.
The cause of death was “blunt force head injuries,” the affidavit said, and Scully had “wounds on his arms that are consistent with defensive wounds”.
Despite recent allegations against Scully, an investigation “didn’t reveal anything,” Cook County Sheriff Pat Eliasen told the Associated Press. “Most of the reports were regarding harassment.”
Sheriff Eliasen told Fox News Digital in an email on Saturday the brutal killing was “quite a shocker” for the small community of Grand Marais, which has a population of about 1340.
Mr Axtell was charged on Friday to appear in court and is being held in jail on a $US1 million ($A1.52 million) bond, despite objections from his lawyer, Dennis Shaw.
Mr Shaw noted Mr Axtell had no serious criminal history until now, and his longtime ties to Grand Marais made him a minimal flight risk.
His next court appearance is scheduled for April 10.
This article originally appeared on Fox News and was reproduced with permission
Originally published as Dad charged over murder of sex offender with moose antler
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