SAN ANTONIO — Law enforcement said a welfare check in northeast Bexar County for a man who relatives hadn't heard from in months yielded a gruesome discovery: His remains inside a freezer.
His son, 48-year-old David Michael Gibson, was subsequently taken into custody and faces charges of tampering with a corpse. It remains unknown how the victim died.
"It's a heartbreaking case," Sheriff Javier Salazar said, speaking from the 7500 block of Rustic Trail Drive, near FM 78 and Walzem Road.
A sheriff's deputy initially checked the home Thursday when relatives asked law enforcement to conduct a welfare check. That deputy made contact with someone over a Ring camera pretending to be the unidentified victim, Salazar said.
When family members later told the deputy it wasn't their father, they returned as a group to the house to investigate. That's when they noticed a refrigerator in the garage that had been "chained or strapped shut," inside of which were the victim's remains, Salazar said.
"At this point it's too early to tell if the victim was actually murdered," the sheriff said. "But what we have is a badly decomposed body that's been there for some time."
Salazar said it's possible Gibson may have been cashing checks in his father's name; the victim is estimated to be 76 or 77 years old. Gibson's bond has been set at $250,000; if he were to come up with the money, a judge has imposed a special condition making him subject to full house arrest.
Meanwhile, on Friday officers with Bexar County Animal Control returned to the home to take two dogs and two ferrets. There was some questions about ownership and whether the county had authority to take the animals on Thursday, so they waited until they got permission from a family member before removing them from the now-empty home.
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