HUMBOLDT ? When Carolyn Moore answered the knock on her front door Sunday night, she was greeted by a boy wearing only underwear and holding a shotgun.

“There stood this poor, scared half-naked little boy saying ‘Help me, help me. Hide me. They’re after me,”‘ Moore, the wife of former Allen County Sheriff Ron Moore, said. “I could see the fear in his eye. He said, ‘They’re going to get me and spank me hard.”‘

“The child said, ‘I done something really bad,”‘ Carolyn Moore said.

“And I said, ‘What did you do?’

“He said, ‘I shot my dad.”‘

On Wednesday, Allen County Atty. Jerry Hathaway told reporters that the 10-year-old boy, whose name hasn’t been released, was charged with first-degree murder in the shotgun slaying of his father, Robert D. Hamlin, 43. A closed juvenile court hearing was conducted in the county seat of Iola, eight miles north of Humboldt.

Hathaway couldn’t say whether additional charges were filed, if prosecutors would try to move the case or if the child still was in custody.

“It’s a juvenile case, and that’s the charge,” he said, adding that state law allows juvenile offenders to be held until age 23.

Hamlin was shot in the back of the head with a 20-gauge pump shotgun as he sat on a living room couch. The boy walked up the road to the Moores’ home, carrying the shotgun with one unfired shell.

“We believe it to be the weapon, and we’ll be testing evidence to show conclusively that it was the shotgun,” Sheriff Tom Williams said before the hearing. “We are investigating this as a criminal offense. We are looking at anything that relates to motive.”

Carolyn Moore said the father “would do anything in the world for you. He was an extremely hard worker and took care of his family.” She said he worked at a local factory.

Hamlin’s wife, Debbie, and two younger children fled after the shooting to another neighbor. Two other children were coming out of the house when deputies arrived, Williams said.