Parents: Oregon slaying suspect had troubled past

PENDLETON, Ore. (AP) - The parents of a man charged with killing a corrections officer in Umatilla County said they tried to help their son get his life on track but that he had recently been on a downward spiral.

The parents described a troubled past of drug addiction and foster care for 22-year-old Joshua Weeks.

Authorities said Weeks confessed to fatally stabbing Buddy Herron, a corrections officer and volunteer firefighter. Police say Herron was on his way to work at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution when he stopped to help Weeks at a highway crash scene on Monday.

"What Josh did it completely unspeakable," said his mother, Jeni Neth of Pendleton. "I'm so sorry for the family and the hurt he's caused. I can't imagine the hurt they feel. That's just not my son."

Court documents say Herron told a 911 dispatcher that he had been stabbed by a man with red hair. He was pronounced dead at a Pendleton hospital. Police caught up with Herron's stolen truck and arrested Weeks after he rolled the truck in a farm field.

Neth, a single mother, said she lost contact with her son for 14 years, when her own mother took the grandchildren to Portland where they were raised by Neth's brother. She said her brother died of a heart attack in 2000 and Weeks was put in foster care.

Weeks' father, Charles Weeks of Nampa, said that the man portrayed as the confessed killer of a good Samaritan is not the son he knows. He said his son could be kindhearted, helpful and emotional, but that drug use and years of being in the foster care system had harmed him.

"I don't know what in the last few months has happened to him," Charles Weeks said.

Neth reconnected with her son in 2009 when she found him on Facebook. He'd been living in Portland and told her he used methamphetamine but hoped to get sober, she said, and she allowed him to live with her as long as he stayed away from drugs and got a job.

She said he eventually fell in with a bad crowd and began flaunting her rules a little more each day. "He was home a lot, and looking for work," Neth said. "Then, all of a sudden, he's gone four or five hours, then eight or nine hours, then overnight."

Weeks was close to completing a high-school equivalency diploma, she said. He worked several jobs around town and could be helpful at times. He'd wash her car, cut firewood, or help a neighbor move boxes.

"When he started doing dope again, he threw it all out the window," she said, and she eventually kicked him out.

Neth said she last saw her son in October at his father's home in Nampa, where Weeks had gone looking for work. He was helping his uncle move to a new house, she said, and the family enjoyed a few beers together when the work was done.

A short time later, however, Weeks stole the same uncle's car and some money and returned to Oregon, his parents said.

Charles Weeks said he's been sick, both emotionally and physically, since a police officer arrived at his doorstep to say his son had been taken into custody on murder charges.

"My prayers are with the family, and the victim and my son, as well," the father said.

Funeral services for Herron were scheduled for Monday in Pendleton.