Jan. 7—An Española man is charged with murder in the recent death of his mother in a mobile home where they both lived.
Police allege in charging documents Steven Dobberowsky, 60, admitted to killing his 79-year-old mother, Susan Coatney-Larkin, but officers did not disclose any details about the cause of her death.
Española police were dispatched to Dobberowsky’s mobile home at Cook’s Mobile Home Park on Monday evening in response to a report of a possible overdose. When they arrived at the residence, they found Dobberowsky lying on a bed in the living room, and he told them he had killed his mother, officers allege in a criminal complaint.
Coatney-Larkin was found deceased under a pile of clothes and blankets just feet away her son, according to the complaint.
Police wrote Dobberowsky told officers he had “blacked out” and did not remember what happened.
In an interview with an Española police detective afterward, Dobberowsky said he had been caring for his mother — who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease — for about five years, and in the past six months she had grown more “mean” toward him, the complaint states. When he was trying to help her, he said, according to the complaint, she kicked him in the genitals and he “snapped” and “freaked out.”
Officers wrote Dobberowsky’s knuckles were red and that he had “cuts and scrapes” on his forearms, but he told them he did not remember hitting her.
Dobberowsky told officers he had taken “a bunch of” Tylenol and drank vodka after killing her, in an apparent suicide attempt, police allege in the complaint.
“He didn’t want anyone to hate him for something he did on accident,” the detective wrote. “He stated he didn’t mean to do that.”
Española police Chief Mizel Garcia said investigators are awaiting a report from the state Office of the Medical Investigator to determine the circumstances of Coatney-Larkin’s death.
Still, he said, it was clearly a homicide.
“There is other evidence that we’re following up on,” he said. “There were some overt signs [of trauma], but we don’t know exactly how she received those injuries.”
Garcia said Coatney-Larkin appeared to have been killed 24 to 48 hours before officers arrived at the residence around 9 p.m. Monday.
Española police have not had any prior interactions with Dobberowsky or his mother, Garcia added.
Dobberowsky doesn’t appear to have a recent criminal history in New Mexico, according to a search of the state court records database. He was convicted of a drug dealing charge in 1987.