A 75-year-old Vietnam veteran who suffers from PTSD claims he didn’t know what he was doing when he allegedly shot his wife to death in the middle of the night.
The Tulsa Police Department said Charles Bradley called 911 claiming he found his wife dead in their home in the early morning hours of May 1 and he “may have killed her.”
“The male caller is now saying that he found his wife down in the hallway. He had last seen her when they went to bed last night. He has a gun but stored in the nightstand, trying to start CPR,” the 911 dispatcher says in the video. “The caller is now saying he’s certain that his wife was shot.”
Video shows officers approaching Bradley’s home and knocking on the front door. The crying husband is taken into custody
“Come out with your hands out, keep coming. Do you have a weapon? Come on out. Come out all the way. Is there anybody else inside besides your wife? No. I’m gonna have you step aside with these other officers,” an officer says to Bradley in the video.
Officers then enter the house and confirm that Sandra Bradley is dead with multiple gunshot wounds.
‘I was having dreams about an attack’
After police read Bradley his Miranda Rights and took him into custody, the Vietnam veteran started telling officers what happened in a series of different stories.
Bradley told officers he was awoken by the alarm on his wife’s cell phone while he was dreaming.
“I was having dreams about an attack,” Bradley told the officers.
“Tonight. Really? What happened in the dream?” the police ask him during this exchange.
“Anytime they drop them over there it’s too close. I didn’t do anything,” Bradley told authorities. “Then her alarm started going off a few minutes later. I got out of bed … couldn’t find her phone.”
Charles Bradley
‘Blood all over the floor’
The elderly man describes what happened next.
“There was blood all over the floor and it looked like a slug laying there beside her on the floor. So I stepped over her to turn her phone off and she was not moving. She wasn’t answering any call that I asked of her,” Bradley told the officers in the video.
He continued on to say: “I hate to say that the dreams I had have anything to do with what happened because I was in bed asleep when her alarm went off.”
Cops took Bradley into custody and charged him with his wife’s murder. He pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and was released after posting $70,000 of his $1 million bond.
Bradley is required to obey a curfew and wear a tracking device as he awaits his next court hearing next month.
The Law&Crime Network’s Sierra Gillespie gives a full report on this case.
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