Huxford man charged in father’s death
By DON FLETCHER
News Staff Writer
Escambia County (Ala.) authorities know the person they have in custody is responsible for the June 8 shooting death of a 72-yer-old Huxford man. They just don’t know yet what prompted the shooting.
According to Escambia County Detention Center records, Thomas Matthew Nall, 32, remained behind bars Tuesday. He is being held under a $1 million bond, charged with one open count of murder in the death of his father, Donald Nall, with whom he shared a residence along Alabama Highway 21, near Huxford.
Escambia County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Mike Lambert said Monday that deputies who were dispatched to the residence Friday night had no idea they were responding to the site of a murder.
“We got a call around 9 p.m. from a person at [the crime scene address] about an unresponsive male,” said Lambert, who added that the caller mentioned nothing about a shooting having taken place. “When our deputies arrived on the scene, they found an occupant of the house — Donald Nall — in the yard with an obvious gunshot wound to his person. He had been shot once in the head.
“We still don’t know what [Matthew Nall’s] motive was, whether it was a domestic incident or what.”
Deputies began securing the crime scene and gathering evidence as emergency medical personnel arrived and officially pronounced the man dead. His son remained at the residence as the preliminary stages of the investigation were conducted.
“Also at the scene, deputies made contact with Matthew Nall, the victim’s son,” Lambert said. “As the result of the investigation, they eventually arrested Matthew Nall and charged him with murder.”
Lambert said the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Evidence Response Team assisted ECSO personnel with processing the crime scene and with location of the murder weapon, a handgun of unspecified caliber. Deputies and the federal crime scene investigators reportedly worked for 18 hours before completing their tasks.
Last week’s mortal incident was not the first time the younger Nall had acted violently against his father.
According to published reports, he attacked his father, inside their truck, at a Pensacola, Fla. shopping center in December 2015. He told authorities he did so because his father “was controlling,” having ordered him to place packages in the pickup in a certain order, and that his father “controlled his finances.”
Nall, who also told Pensacola police his family was responsible for several murders, was charged with felony aggravated battery upon a person age 65 or older.
Since the Huxford man’s most recent arrest, county lawmen have also become aware of Facebook postings of a Satanic nature that he made in the past, including one in March 2017 in which he warned of a “Satanic emergency” and named six people he considered “problems for Satanics.” At least one of those, he wrote, “needed to die.”
Lambert said the June 8 homicide is still under investigation and that Donald Nall’s body had been sent to the state crime lab in Mobile for an autopsy.