A man accused of killing his 78-year-old father is incompetent to stand trial, court finds
A man charged with first-degree murder in the shooting of his 78-year-old father in Tacoma has been found incompetent to stand trial due to mental illness.
Kurt Otto Alan Youngers, 54, was arrested Feb. 1 after he texted a friend about the shooting and the friend called 911, charging papers say.
Police found the father, Otto Youngers dead on the couch at his home in the 3500 block of South Wilkeson Street. He’d been shot in the face.
Pierce County Superior Court Judge Kitty-Ann van Doorninck signed an order Nov. 20, finding that “as a result of mental disease or defect,” Youngers was not competent to stand trial.
The order sent him back to Western State Hospital, to be evaluated for possible civil commitment.
Youngers had been undergoing treatment at the hospital to try to restore his competency, according to court records.
A psychological evaluation filed with the court Nov. 13 found he wasn’t able to “understand the nature of the proceedings against him,” or “assist in his own defense due to continued delusional beliefs about his case.”
Additional efforts to restore his competency wasn’t likely to change that, the psychologist who evaluated him found.
Youngers allegedly told detectives in February that his father was a “monster” who he shot for failing to admit responsibility for the killing of President John Kennedy or for being a Nazi.
In April and May he wrote letters to the court making those allegations and others, such as that his father was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and had killed Youngers’ best friend.
Youngers reportedly told the mental health evaluator he acted in self-defense, and that his father had killed others and had planned to leave the country.
This story was originally published November 27, 2018 at 3:08 PM.
