A Rock Springs mother was arrested Friday and charged with attempted second-degree murder on suspicion that she shot her son in the neck during a domestic argument last month.
Alice Ione Halstead, 57, could face between 20 years and life in prison if convicted on the attempted murder charge. She also faces one count of domestic battery (punishable by up to six months in jail and $750 in fines), and a third count of marijuana possession (up to one year in jail and $1,000 in fines) according to court documents filed Friday in Rock Springs Circuit Court.
Halstead claimed self-defense when she called 911 the evening of June 21, says a statement Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jason Mower released Friday.
Her son, 37-year-old Cameron Scott Colley, gave a different account in his interview with a detective, court documents say.
Neck Shot
Sweetwater County Detective Matt Wharton was dispatched the evening of June 21 to a home in the Northpark neighborhood, north of Rock Springs, for a report of a shooting, according to court documents and the sheriff’s office statement.
Wharton entered the home and arrived at the far south side bedroom, where he saw Colley lying on the ground next to the bed, his neck bleeding from a gunshot wound, says the evidentiary affidavit, compiled from the notes of Wharton and Undersheriff Joseph Tomich.
Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Deputy Casey Watkins put pressure on the wound until medical personnel arrived.
Halstead, Colley’s mother, told Watkins she shot Colley with a revolver to defend herself, and that he was going to hit her with a guitar neck during an argument, says the document.
The revolver reportedly lay on her bed in the bedroom where the shooting happened.
In an apparent contrast to Halstead’s guitar-neck claim, the affidavit counters, “Halstead said that Colley did not have anything in his hands when she shot him.”
Speak
Wharton was able to speak to the wounded man two days later at the University of Utah Medical Center.
Colley said his Saturday morning “went fine” and that he and his son played video games most of the day, while his mother watched women’s basketball in her bedroom, the document says.
The affidavit says Colley decided to have a couple beers, and a little whiskey; then he made his son lunch.
His mother started yelling at him, perhaps because of his drinking, the man told the detective, reportedly.
“It really was not important to him as to why she was yelling at him, as he was more worried about getting dinner done,” the affidavit says, adding that she kept yelling, and, exasperated, he eventually yelled back.
Halstead found a walking stick in her room that his grandfather had made for his sister when she was little, and she hit her son over the back with it, the affidavit alleges.
The son snatched it from her hands and broke it in half, reportedly.
“He went back into Halstead’s bedroom and told her it was enough with the sticks,” says the document. It says Halstead pulled the gun out as he was walking away.
She said something, and he turned to find out what she was saying.
“That’s when everything went black and (Colley) started coughing blood,” says the affidavit.
Tomich searched the home.
The document says he found several small packages of marijuana and “marijuana consumption devices” in a nightstand drawer, alongside a five-shot revolver speed loader with two rounds of .38 special jacketed hollow point ammunition, and a clear transparent ammunition box containing 18 rounds of assorted .38 special ammunition.
Different Story
On the day Wharton was at the hospital, Tomich was listening to Halstead’s original 911 call from June 21.
Halstead’s account on that call differs from Colley’s account of what happened.
Halstead provided the address to the dispatcher, asked for an ambulance and said, “my son has been hitting me, so I shot him.” She described the gun as a .38 caliber revolver, and said she shot him in the left side of his neck – and that the gun was on the bed, the affidavit says.
Her son was in the bedroom, dying, Halstead reportedly said.
“I can’t believe this,” she told the dispatcher, according to the document. “He hit me several times.”
She also told the dispatcher her son had been drunk for three days.
The dispatcher tried giving Halstead emergency aid instructions, telling her how to reposition her son, but Halstead said she couldn’t do that, and said he’d tried to beat her with a guitar neck and had slapped her face, the document relates.
“Then I told him to get out, but he would not leave, then… he was going to hit me again, and I grabbed my gun and told him I was going to shoot him if he didn’t get out,” she said, according to the affidavit.
The dispatcher asked for clarification, of whether he had hit her with the guitar neck.
“No, he was gonna (unintelligible),” she answered, reportedly.
The Sweetwater County Attorney’s Office declined to comment.
The sheriff’s office said the space of time between the shooting and the arrest was devoted to investigative legwork.
“Establishing someone’s intent doesn’t always happen overnight,” said Mower. “And it takes time to see the big picture and piece things together – whether it’s interviews, evidence analysis, witness statements: every step matters.”
Mower continued: “And so, sometimes, the best thing we can do as investigators is to slow down and make sure we get it right. And that’s how we build strong cases and do right by the process.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
