You don't hear this often.

Shooting at apartment complex leaves two dead.

The headline, unfortunately, isn't very unusual. Nor is the fact, frankly, that it happened on my side of town.

Here's what I found unusual:

The suspect's father, Roy Mateen, told the San Antonio Express-News that Strong called him after the incident and told him he shot two women but didn't know if they were dead.

Mateen said Strong hinted about fleeing to Mateen's home in Mississippi, but the father told his son he would call the authorities if he tried. Mateen suggested his son turn himself in to police.

“I told him, ‘I'm not going to hold you up for your wrongdoings,'” he said. “He knows my rules. It's terrible what he did.

“The first thing I thought was that he locked himself up for life,” Mateen added. “He killed himself as well as those people.”

snip

Mateen said his son left Mississippi for San Antonio about 15 years ago with the mother of his son.

Strong told his father several times that he was having child-custody issues with the mother. The suspect's father said he thought it was because Strong wasn't paying child support.

“You need to take care of your child the way I took care of you,” Mateen said he told his son. “I stayed out of trouble with the law.”

Hmm. It seems Tabari Strong wasn't a choir boy.