A man who shot and killed his father in Picture Rocks last week used a homemade shotgun made of metal pipes, authorities said in court records.
On Oct. 20, a physical altercation broke out between Nicholas Ocskai, 30 and his father, Howard Ocskai, 56, at their residence near the 6000 block of North Featherstone Trail. During the altercation, Howard reportedly produced a handgun and pointed it at Nicholas, according to an interim complaint filed in court by the Pima County Sheriff's Department.
Both men separated from each other and went to their respective residences on the property. According to Nicholas, Howard entered his residence, and another fight broke out, where Howard reportedly put Nicholas into a choke hold and began to strangle him to the point where he could not breath for a second or two, court records say.
During this fight, Howard was armed with a walking stick or a cane and poked Nicholas in the stomach once or twice. Nicholas had a "black pipe shotgun" in his residence and Howard grabbed it and threw one of the two pieces of the shotgun outside of the trailer, court records say.
The two separated again and Nicholas went to grab both pieces of the homemade shotgun in order to put it back together. As he was putting it back together, the shotgun went off and struck Howard in the torso, court records said. Howard was later pronounced dead.
According to court records, Howard had sent a text message to his wife stating that everyone was OK and he had not filed a police report yet. He also said that Nicholas had shoved him, put his hands around his neck and had been banging on the house with “this metal pipe weapon thing.”
Howard also told his wife that he went out to keep the peace between Nicholas and his girlfriend and told them to separate from each other, court records say. Howard said “he never touched him” and indicated that Nicholas was not welcome back to the property.
Nicholas described the shotgun as being two pieces of metal pipe with a metal end cap containing a nail, court records say. He described to investigators how to fire a shell from the metal pipe.
Nicholas was arrested and charged on suspicion of second-degree murder. He is in the Pima County jail on a $500,000 bond. Nicholas Ocskai was sentenced in 2019 to a year in state prison for organized retail theft, according to online records of the Arizona Department of Corrections.
