A jury found a Brockton man not guilty by reason of insanity on a first-degree murder charge connected to the 2021 beating death of his father on Tuesday, the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office announced.
Stephen Walcott Jr., 46, was accused of using his fists and a dumbbell to kill his father, 70-year-old Stephen Walcott Sr., at his father’s East Bridgewater home, the district attorney’s office said previously.
Walcott will now become a resident at Bridgewater State Hospital where he will receive continued mental health treatment, the district attorney’s office said in a Tuesday press release.
“I respect the decision of the jury in this difficult case,” Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz said in the release. “My office would like to assure the public that Walcott Jr. is not being released as a result of this verdict. … [He] will not be released into the community until medical professionals determine he is not a danger to himself or others.”
On the evening of Feb. 8, 2021, East Bridgewater police responded to Walcott’s father’s home at 137 Cedar St. for a well-being check, the district attorney’s office said. At the scene, they found the 70-year-old with traumatic head injuries. First-responders declared him dead at his home.
Witnesses told investigators that they’d seen a man matching Walcott’s description at his father’s home earlier that afternoon, the district attorney’s office said. Police arrested him later that day after he arrived at his mother’s house, and he was soon charged in his father’s death.
At the time, the killing was the first homicide to happen in East Bridgewater in nearly 30 years.