A dispute between two men working on a vacant home Friday morning turned deadly when one of the men pulled out a gun and shot the other before calling Manteca Police dispatch and reporting the incident.
Detectives believe that the actions of the man who fired the gun, 57-year-old Ted Dehoop Jr., cleared the threshold to qualify as murder – resulting in his arrest hours after he was taken to the Manteca Police Department and questioned while detectives processed the crime scene with the help of a California Department of Justice mobile crime lab.
The shooting occurred at around 9:30 a.m. on Friday on the 400 block of Verda Court – where the two men, who apparently knew one another, may have been working on a vacant home that was having renovations done. When officers arrived after receiving Dehoop Jr.’s 911 call, they discovered the victim – 37-year-old Nathan McFadden – deceased from a single gunshot wound. Officers recovered the weapon that was used in the shooting and cordoned off the area
According to Manteca Police Sergeant Joe Ahuna, neither Dehoop Jr. nor McFadden lived at the residence that was in a neighborhood immediately west of the Louise Avenue fire station.
Police said the shooting was not random as the two men were known to each other although a motive or an explanation as to what led up to the shooting was not released.
Manteca Police announced via Facebook after 5 p.m. that probable cause to place Dehoop Jr. under arrest for murder was determined by detectives. He was transported to the San Joaquin County Jail where is being held without bail for a single count of murder. He is scheduled to appear in Department 1 of the Manteca branch of the San Joaquin County Superior Court on Tuesday, July 30. at 1:25 p.m.
News of the shooting death came less than a week after a 19-year-old was gunned down near Southside Park – troubling neighborhood residents that feared retaliation may be in store and the violent clashes that were at one time commonplace at the park would return again. In his comments to the media on Friday, Ahuna stressed the fact that the incident on Verda Court was not an act of violence against a random person, and that the identity of the shooter was never in question given the fact that Dehoop Jr. was the one who called the authorities to report what had transpired. Ahuna also said that it appeared that the argument that sparked the shooting may have been of a business nature, but those details were not initially clear.
According to his Facebook page, McFadden, who attended Manteca High School, was a Union Laborer and the father of a young girl.
To contact reporter Jason Campbell email jcampbell@mantecabulletin.com or call 209.249.3544.
