Richard Ellison is charged with second-degree murder for allegedly killing his neighbor by gouging his eyes out. (Picture: Southern Regional Jail)
Richard Ellison is charged with second-degree murder for allegedly killing his neighbor by gouging his eyes out. (Picture: Southern Regional Jail)

An alleged killer accused his neighbor by gouging his eyes out with his bare hands because his rooster was too loud had a history of disturbing behavior that included an incident where he shoved is girlfriend’s hands into a fire, police said.

Richard Ellison, 47, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder in Rock, West Virginia for the murder of Benny Foutch, 72, on May 17. Ellison also allegedly killed Foutch’s rooster.

Ellison appeared in court via video on Wednesday and police gave testimony about the grisly killing and the chilling statements Ellison made upon his arrest.

Detective-Corporal MS Horn said Ellison was diagnosed with bipolar and was once committed to a behavioral facility after he tried to put his girlfriend’s hands in a fire about two years ago.

Horn also said Ellison’s son told him that his father stared at him with a cooking pot in his hand the day before Foutch was killed.

When officers investigated Foutch’s home, they found a bloody handprint near the area where Foutch’s body was discovered. That print and other evidence have been sent for analysis.

Ellison told him that he originally went to Foutch’s house because the crowing rooster was ‘driving him crazy.’

‘I asked him what happened with him and Benny, he then made the hand motion of pressing his thumbs to his eyes,’ Horn testified, according to the Bluefield Daily Telegraph.

‘He advised he went up there to kill the rooster because of a movie he had watched and because it was crowing. He later explained that he pressed his thumbs into Benny’s eyes, he advised that he stayed there until he knew Benny was dead.’

He made the statement that he killed him, referring to the incident with Benny. He made a reference that Lucifer made him do it. He kept asking me to shoot him, that he deserved it.’

Horn added that after Ellison ‘talked about them playing a fiddle and singing a song in the Bible, and “squeal like a pig,”‘ he realized Ellison was talking about the movie ‘Deliverance,’ a movie in which a group of friends are savagely attacked in rural Georgia by deranged locals.

Ellison is charged with second-degree murder instead of first-degree murder because there is no evidence he intended to kill Foutch when he went to his home

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