Man Kills, Dismembers Father After Believing Him To Be Robot

A man allegedly shot and killed his father and dismembered his corpse after believing him to be a robot in Lawrence County, Indiana.

Deputies reportedly responded to a welfare check at the accused Shawn Hays' home in Lawrence County, Indiana on Dec. 20. The person who called the police for the welfare check informed them that Hays, 53, told them that he had shot and mutilated his 73-year-old father Rodney Hays because he had been turned into a robot, Fox News reported.

When police arrived at the scene, they saw Hays trying to back out of the driveway in his silver Chevrolet pickup. The officers also reportedly found a shotgun in the vehicle, which officers managed to remove while distracting him. When they asked Hays about his father, Hays told them that it wasn’t his father, and insisted that it was instead a robot that looked like his father.

When police asked Hays where his father was, Hays gestured toward the residence, directly behind the vehicle. According to officers, he got combative when they asked him to get out of the truck.

During the argument, Hays told police “It’s a robot that looks like a human…laying over there. I had to shoot at it to destroy it.”

Hays was arrested at the scene. After Hays was arrested, officers found his father lying in front of the residence, dead from apparent gunshot wounds to his head and chest. His body was reportedly found to be mutilated and partially dismembered.

When interviewed by detectives, Hays admitted to the shooting, mutilating, and partially dismembering the robot, who looked like his father. Hays faces multiple criminal charges, including murder, abuse of a corpse, domestic battery, and aggravated battery in connection with the incident, WTWO reported.

The incident comes about a week after various Facebook accounts linked to Hays detail a variety of alarming and troubling thoughts. In one post, written a week before the deadly shooting, Hays declared distrust in his father. He wrote in the post that he believed someone had kidnapped or murdered his father and replaced him with “a robot that looks like my dad.”