Man convicted of involuntary manslaughter in father’s drowning, told police he was baptizing him

BROCKTON, Mass. — A Massachusetts man who told police he was exorcising a demon and performing a baptism when he pushed his father’s head underwater several times has been convicted of involuntary manslaughter.

A jury found 22-year-old Jack Callahan guilty Thursday after an eight-day trial. Callahan will be sentenced on May 3.

In June 2021, police in Duxbury received a call that Callahan, then 19, was acting erratically and that his father, Scott Callahan, 57, was missing at a pond in a park.

Prosecutors said police found Jack Callahan distraught and hyperventilating in a home. Fire officials found Scott Callahan submerged in the pond at about the same time. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Investigators said the younger man initially tried to help his father, who had left a center where he was being treated for alcohol abuse. The two took a rideshare from Boston to the pond area. According to prosecutors, the two started fighting.

Scott Callahan’s cause of death was drowning, and the manner of death was homicide, prosecutors said.

Jack Callahan, who was charged with murder, pleaded not guilty. He told police in 2021 that he believed his father was possessed by a demon and that he needed to be baptized and exorcised, investigators said. That information was not included in Callahan’s lawsuit, according to The Patriot Ledger.

Callahan’s attorney called the investigation “shoddy.” He said the state did not have enough evidence to convict Callahan.