NEW ORLEANS -- Edwin Dowden was shocked by what he saw when he returned home Sunday after a quick run to the grocery store.
Police taped cordoned off a home in the 10200 block of Brookfield Drive. Inside they found the body of 73-year-old Beverly Wilkerson.
Officers rushed to the home and broke through a locked door after 31-year-old Ernest Richardson, Wikerson’s grandson, called 911 to tell them he fatally shot his grandmother and wrapped her in plastic before stealing her car.
Richardson was jailed on a count of second-degree murder. His bond was set at $350,000.
“That's horrific,” Dowden said Monday. “A grandmother being slaughtered by her grandson? No words, no words. I can't explain.”
Police wrote in court documents that Richardson told officers he was at at the Historic Second Baptist Church in the 2500 block of Marengo Street in Uptown around 11:40 a.m. Sunday.
It was there officers found him and Beverly Wilkerson’s 2008 Toyota Camry.
At the same time, other officers rushed to Wilkerson’s home in the 10200 block of Brookfield Drive in New Orleans East and forced their way inside after getting no answer at the door.
They found Wilkerson dead inside, wrapped in plastic, according to court documents.
Police said Richardson confessed to the killing Wilkerson early Sunday morning then leaving in her car. A motive was not identified.
But Wilkerson's grandson and Richardson's brother, Chris Wilkerson, told The New Orleans Advocate during an interview Monday that his grandmother had ongoing conflicts with a number of her relatives.
Still, he was still stunned when he received a phone call from his mother while at church Sunday telling him that his grandmother was dead after being shot in the head and his brother was in jail for allegedly pulling the trigger.
"It's sunk in," Chris Wilkerson said, more than a day after police learned what happened to his grandmother. "And it's still a shock."
Neighbors described Wilkerson as quiet and friendly.
This was Richardson’s first arrest in Orleans Parish, according to court records, but not his first arrest. He has been accused of acting violently toward someone close to him at least once before.
While living in Los Angeles in 2010, he was charged with causing corporal injury to a spouse in case that is listed as pending, according to court records.
Before that, he had pleaded no contest to possession for sale of cocaine, records in L.A. show.
Chris Wilkerson said Richardson now lived in Baton Rouge but would come to New Orleans on occasion to visit relatives.
He faces mandatory life imprisonment if eventually convicted of murdering Beverly Wilkerson.
New Orleans Advocate reporter Ramon Antonio Vargas contributed to this report.