A father in California is accused of killing his nine-year-old son.

Rowena Shaddox has the story.

This is how the crime scene tape and bahs of evidence removed from a home on Circle began.

"We got a 911 call from a hysterical female," says Officer Michele Gigante of the Sacramento Police Dept.
Sacramento Police say Philip Hernandez began a series of unusual, then unthinkable events.

"Grabbed a hatchet from the backyard of his own house, broke into the glass sliding door of his own house," saysd Officer Gigante.

From there, that hysterical woman, possibly Hernandez's mother or girlfiend, saw him towering over his sleeping nine-year-old son, Matthew, a Jefferson Elementary School student, on the sofa.

"She tried to intervene, he pushed her aside and then he attacked his son with a hatchet," says Officer Gigante.

After allegedly beating his son to death, Hernandez left, dropped the hatchet, and took off.

He was found less than a mile away. All the while, the gruesome scene of a dead fourth grader was spreading beyond the Hernandez family, to Sacramento Police. The questions are more plentiful than answers.

"That is the man's home, that is the father's home, why he broke into the house, why he broke through the glass door, why he attacked his son, is still a mystery at this point," says Officer Gigante.