VAN BUREN -A drunken Eddie Hice cried and insisted he loved his father after a Crawford County sheriff’s deputy arrested him in connection with the shotgun shooting death of the elder Hice on March 13, according to sheriff’s office reports in the case.
Eddie Hice, 54, was charged in Crawford County Circuit Court on March 25 with first-degree murder in the slaying of Hershel Hice, 75, at their rural Van Buren home at 729 Pleasant Valley Road. He is also charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm and committing a felony with a firearm, according to the prosecutor’s records.
Eddie Hice pleaded innocent to the charges, according to the prosecutor’s office, and a judge has appointed the public defender to represent him. He was held in the Crawford County jail in lieu of a $100,000 bond.
Reports say that Hice called the sheriff’s office on the afternoon of March 13 reporting that he had just shot his father. The dispatcher told Hice to put the gun down and to go outside and surrender to deputies being sent to the scene. Hice told an investigator later that if the dispatcher had not continued to talk to him before deputies arrived,he would have shot himself.
He told sheriff’s investigator Donnie Threet that he got up at 7 a.m. on March 13 and drank a pint of whiskey. At 10 a.m., he drank two beers with his medication and asked his father, who kept the beer locked up, for two more. His father consented but slammed the beers down on a table, put a 9mm pistol to Eddie Hice’s head and threatened to shoot him.
Hice said his father backed down and put the pistol back in his bedroom. Deputies reported finding a pistol in Hershel Hice’s waistband when they examined his body.
The two men continued to argue throughout the day, Eddie Hice told Threet. He said at one point that even though his brother had started drinking again, his father thought he could do no wrong.
Hershel Hice’s wife, Lillie, told deputies after the shooting that she was out shopping when her husband called her, saying Eddie Hice was drunk and giving him trouble. She said she told her husband to call the police and began heading for home.
About 2 p.m., Eddie Hice told Threet, he got a 12-gauge shotgun, loaded it with two rounds of buckshot and shot his father in the chest as he sat on a couch in the house. He said he shot his father because, if he hadn’t, his father would have shot him.
Arkansas, Pages 16 on 04/02/2014