Joshua Lee Webb allegedly killed his mother and then stabbed someone else. Photo / Police handout
Joshua Lee Webb allegedly killed his mother and then stabbed someone else. Photo / Police handout
A 36-year-old man allegedly decapitated his mum on Mother's Day before carrying her severed head into a grocery store and stabbing a cashier.
Joshua Lee Webb has been charged with the murder of his mum, 59-year-old Tina Marie Webb, and attempted murder in the stabbing of 66-year-old Michael Wagner.
Thegruesome chain of events sent shockwaves through two tiny, rural areas in the US state of Oregon where they unfolded.
Webb's father, David Webb, said his son had vision problems and received social security payments, but never showed any signs that he might be capable of the crime.
"I never foresaw a problem. If I had I would have stopped it," Mr Webb told AP before bursting into tears during a telephone interview.
Webb's mother had told her husband she believed their son was depressed, but the father said he never saw any indications of that when he spoke with his son. The parents recently bought him a dog because he wanted one.
"I just can't believe I lost my wife and son in one day ... I wish I had some answers, but I don't. I waited all my life to retire with my wife, and now I can't. That's all I know," Mr Webb said.
Webb decapitated his mum on Sunday afternoon at the family's rural home in the once-significant logging town of Colton, about 64 kilometres south of Portland, the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office said.
He then showed up about 19 kilometres away at a small grocery story covered in blood with a large kitchen knife and carrying her head, authorities said.
After arriving at the store, Webb stabbed the store employee but was quickly subdued by other employees who held him until officers arrived, authorities said.
Tina and David Webb, pictured in 2009. Photo / Facebook
The suspect told police only that he was thirsty, said Ernie Roberts, the interim police chief of nearby Sandy, Oregon, which provides police services for Estacada.
"He was in like a catatonic state, wasn't speaking to anybody," Mr Roberts said.
The grocery store checkout clerk was hospitalised and is expected to survive.
Customers on Monday placed balloons as tributes in front of the store, lit candles near its parking lot and signed a large get-well poster for the worker.
At Lew's Drive-In restaurant next door, where the supermarket's customers took refuge during Sunday's crime, owner Marvin Flora said the event was "traumatic, but it happened so fast that nobody really saw what was going on."
"One lady came in this morning and said she actually saw somebody come in with something that was bloody and was carrying something with his arm," Mr Flora said.
