Hearing Begins For Son Accused Of Killing Father

Friday, April 6th 2007, 2:39 pm

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- A preliminary hearing will continue next week to determine whether a former star soccer player should stand trial for allegedly killing his father with an ax.

Andrew Jude Thompson, 20, is accused of first-degree murder in the slaying of Emmanuel Thompson, 48, who was stabbed and hit in the head with an ax on Nov. 20. The father's body was stuffed in a freezer at the home they shared in The Village, an Oklahoma City suburb.

Special Judge Carol Ann Hubbard also will determine at a hearing on April 13 whether Thompson will be tried on a charge of second-degree forgery and five counts of possession of a taken credit card for allegedly using his dead father's credit cards.

Thompson also faces one count of assault and battery on a police officer for allegedly attacking a jailer while in custody at the Oklahoma County Jail.

Skip Kelly, an attorney for Andrew Thompson, has said the killing came during a fight and after the son had suffered years of abuse from the father.

Shawn Milligan, a police detective in The Village, testified Friday that Thompson told him he stabbed his father after the man attacked him with a stick during an argument in the kitchen over a car accident the son had been in.

The father pushed his son into the garage, but they ended up in a second altercation in which the son picked up an ax and hit his father in the head with it, Milligan said Thompson told him.

"He said he fell back into the kitchen and held his dad's head in his arm until he died," Milligan testified. "He said his dad was a big man and that he just couldn't defend himself."

While Milligan said Andrew Thompson admitted killing his father, he said he gave conflicting statements to investigators about the details of the crime.

"They were all a little different," Milligan said.

During Friday's preliminary hearing, Kelly questioned Milligan about whether investigators botched the handling of the crime scene. Andrew Thompson managed to hide from investigators in an attic crawl space for hours after a county tactical team cleared the home, and the ax police believe was used to kill Emmanuel Thompson was not discovered until days after the home was initially searched.

"There was a time when the house was not secured as a crime scene," Milligan said.

Milligan said he and other police officers had been called to the home numerous times in recent years because of fights between Emmanuel Thompson and either his ex-wife or his son.

Police arrested Emmanuel Thompson in 2003 for hitting his son for "disobeying house rules and orders," according to court documents. Emmanuel Thompson pleaded guilty to assault and battery and was let off without a jail sentence.

Andrew Thompson, an all-state soccer player at Northwest Classen High School, played briefly at Northern Oklahoma College in Tonkawa before he was dismissed from the team for violating team rules.

The father, who also played soccer, was a soccer coach at the Classen School of Advanced Studies, a magnet school for academically gifted students.