SEAGOVILLE (CBS 11 NEWS) – “My dad is in jail and my son’s passed away. What else is there to say?” Tiffany Dickerson summed up her nightmare. Her father, 52-year-old Tony Dickerson, is charged with intoxicated manslaughter, after a crash Sunday night that killed her 5-year-old son Josiah.
Dickerson remained in jail Monday night. His family is trying to find enough money to post his bond.
Relatives told CBS 11 News Dickerson did have a couple beers Sunday evening, but they say what happened that night was nothing more than a horrible accident.
(credit: Dickerson family)
It was just last week when Josiah, sat on Santa’s lap. “Beautiful, just beautiful. Beautiful,” she recalled.
Now tragedy has torn the family apart. “My dad is in jail and my son’s passed away,” Tiffany stated flatly. “What else is there to say?”
According to Tiffany, her son often begged his grandfather for a ride in his truck before bed.
The now devastated mother remembers little Josiah begging, “Papaw just take me for one ride, one ride papaw. One ride.” It was a ride that usually didn’t take very long. “They’d usually just drive down the street and back up. That’s it. Just down the road, not two miles,” she said.
But it was on that short ride Sunday night that Dallas County Sheriff’s Department officials say Tony Dickerson crashed his truck and killed his grandson. The truck went out of control on a curve in the road. The vehicle veered onto the grass and slammed into a fence.
Dickerson told deputies he slipped on the rocks and the dirt on the highway.
Dallas County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Carmen Castro said, “He [Dickerson] did take field sobriety tests which showed he was a bit disoriented.” The sheriff’s office is still waiting for the results of blood alcohol tests.
Investigators are still working to answer lingering questions like — How much alcohol exactly was in Dickerson’s system? Where in the truck was Josiah sitting and was he restrained?
Tiffany Dickerson said her father called her from jail, asking for forgiveness. “I’m like, Daddy, you don’t even have to worry about it. It never even crossed my mind,” she told him.
Dickerson said she knows her father wasn’t drunk. “I don’t want people to make him into a monster he’s not,” she said.
The family is now returning the Christmas presents her son will never get to open, to raise money for Tony Dickerson’s $50,000 bond.
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