An elderly Missouri man has allegedly confessed to killing his 16-year-old grandson on September 17, police in Clinton said.
Thomas Ribby, 70, claimed he didn’t know that the gun had bullets but couldn’t explain why he pointed it at Royce Hayes Osburn.
Investigators learned that the pair had conflicts. The teen was allegedly playing with the gun shortly before the fatal shooting.
“Papa shot me,” the boy’s mother recalled her son saying as he clutched his chest. “My baby died in my arms.”
Ribby barricaded himself inside his apartment. He was later arrested and charged with first-degree murder, endangering the welfare of a child, and resisting arrest.
“I don’t even want to see him,” the grieving mother said of her suspect father. “He’s not my dad. He’s not my dad at all.”
“I don’t ever want to talk to him again. And I don’t care if he burns in hell. I don’t care. He should have never done that to a child.”
“My child deserved more than that. If he wanted to kill somebody, turn around and do it to yourself. I’m sorry. That’s the way I feel.”
