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Logan • The case against a 25-year-old man accused of stabbing his father to death outside his Smithfield home may soon be resolved.
Shane Alan Hallstrom is charged with first-degree felony murder in the April 28 death of 58-year-old Calvin Leon Hallstrom.
The defendant was in court Tuesday for what was expected to be a preliminary hearing, but he waived his right to the hearing, where prosecutors would have presented evidence of the crime and a judge would have decided whether there was probable cause for the case to move forward.
Instead, an Oct. 13 plea hearing was set. Defense attorney Bryan Galloway said after the hearing that his client will likely resolve the case at that hearing.
Galloway said he hopes to find a resolution that will not only be punitive, but will help Shane Hallstrom with any mental health issues he may have. The defendant was found competent to stand trial on the charges, but his attorney said more evaluations will be done to determine the extent of his possible mental illness.
On the day of the stabbing, Shane Hallstrom had invited his father to the Smithfield home where the defendant lives with his mother, with plans to go to dinner, according to a probable cause statement filed with the Cache County jail.
Hallstrom's grandmother told police that her son, Calvin Hallstrom, was "happy because Shane had called him and they were going to reconnect their broken relationship," according to the jail statement.
But when the father arrived outside the son's home at about 5:30 p.m., the son hugged the older man, then jumped on his back and stabbed him in the neck with a paring knife, according one of several witness accounts of the vicious attack.
Shane Hallstrom's mother, who is divorced from his father, told police that she was able to pull her son's hand off the knife and remove it from her ex-husband's neck following attack, according to the jail statement.
The woman then tried to put pressure on the man's wound, but her son tried to stop her. She then took the knife into the house and called 911, the jail statement says.
As she was on the phone, she saw her son "slamming Calvin's head on the concrete," the jail statement says.
She later told police that "Calvin and Shane had a strained relationship."
Police found the son kneeling in the street a few feet away from his father, who was unconscious and bleeding heavily from multiple knife wounds to the neck. The older man was rushed to Cache Valley Hospital, but died a short time later.