When police were putting handcuffs on the wrists of Stephen M. Walcott Jr. Monday night, Walcott’s mother shouted a question to the officers gathered in the driveway of the Brockton home they shared.
“Did he kill his father?’' Walcott’s mother asked, according to a State Police report filed in court.
According to the report and Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz’s office, the 42-year-old Walcott allegedly killed his namesake, Stephen M. Walcott Sr., around dinnertime Monday night in the 70-year-old man’s East Bridgewater home.
“Walcott stated that he killed his father because he is the devil,’' Trooper Joshua J. McKelligan wrote in a report filed in Brockton District Court. “Walcott explained that he went to his father’s house to beat him up . . . When he is doing badly, his father is doing great and acting like he’s great.”
Walcott was arraigned Tuesday. Not-guilty pleas were entered on his behalf to a charge of murder and violating a restraining order that had been imposed when the younger Walcott had allegedly punched his father multiple times in the East Bridgewater home on Sept. 21.
He was ordered held without bail by Judge Daniel E. Dilorati. The last homicide in Bridgewater was in 1992, according to police.
Lisa Walcott, the sister of the suspect and the daughter of the victim, told reporters that “the whole thing is just tragic . . . We’re going to make it so this doesn’t happen to anybody else’s family because my daddy wanted to stay friends with my brother so bad and that’s the saddest part.’'
Walcott’s court-appointed defense attorney, James S. Murphy of Brockton, said prosecutors have not asked that Walcott undergo a mental health evaluation, but such an examination is something the defense is intent on having done.
“That is something we are going to be doing, an evaluation as to what his mental state is and whether or not . . . it may implicate criminal responsibility issues,” he said.
The younger Walcott, in the police report, allegedly gave a statement to police that gave a detailed account of the final confrontation between him and his father.
Walcott allegedly told police he went to his father’s home around 5 p.m. Monday without calling ahead and the two began arguing. He punched his father and knocked him backward before he “grabbed a dumbbell and hit his father in the back of his head,’' police wrote, and delivered other blows.
The younger Walcott then got into his car and drove off, but his arrival and departure was noticed by a next-door neighbor — who was also a witness to the Sept. 21 incident — who became concerned and asked East Bridgewater police to conduct a well-being check. An officer who responded around 6:30 p.m. found the elder Walcott lying on the floor; he was pronounced dead at the house at 7:05 p.m.
Police searched for Walcott’s car and caught up with him as he pulled into the driveway of the Brockton home he shared with his mother.
According to court records and Walcott’s statement to police, he has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and described himself as having been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He told police that since last June, he has been an in-patient at seven separate facilities “all for mental illness.”
In a statement, East Bridgewater police Chief Paul O’Brien offered condolences to the Walcott family for what he described as “this terrible tragedy” and said the younger Walcott was known to his officers.
He said his officers are continually being trained in how to approach the mentally ill. He said the department in 2019 completed a three-year effort to instill a “model policy to address officers’ interactions with those affected by mental illness” and has since 2018 participated in regional program that gives police access to a mental health clinician during crises.
After his son left following the Sept. 21 attack, the elder Walcott told his neighbors his son was off his medication and that he hoped police tracked him down that night.
“I hope they get him. He’s probably going to kill me if they don’t,” the elder Walcott said.
The younger Walcott was voluntarily committed to Brockton Hospital that night, records show.
John R. Ellement can be reached at john.ellement@globe.com. Follow him @JREbosglobe.