Man Held in Shooting of His Son

A Reseda man, accused of stalking his estranged wife and shooting his 18-year-old son, was captured after a friend talked him into going to a county hospital for psychiatric help, police said Tuesday.

Jack Allen Wilson, 41, who authorities say critically wounded his son, John, sought refuge at the friend’s home in Lake View Terrace just after 6 p.m. Monday as police put out a bulletin for his arrest, said Los Angeles Police Det. Rick Swanston.

Noticing that he was acting “strange,” the friend persuaded Wilson to go to Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar, Swanston said.

“When they got to the hospital, he started acting even more bizarre,” the detective said.

It took doctors only a few minutes to determine that they should take the unemployed man into custody for a 72-hour psychiatric evaluation, Swanston said.

Police were notified and after doctors held Wilson overnight, officers arrested him Tuesday morning. He was booked on suspicion of attempted murder and was being held on a $500,000 bond at Los Angeles County jail. Arraignment is scheduled for Thursday.

Early Monday morning, while searching furiously for his estranged wife, Wilson fired a shotgun through the locked front door of his former home on Tampa Avenue in Reseda, wounding his son twice in the chest, police allege.

John Wilson was trying to calm his father, who was fully aware that his son was standing behind the door when he fired through it, police said.

The youth, a freshman and promising baseball player at Cal State Northridge, was recovering well from his wounds, police said Tuesday.

His mother, Cynthia Wilson, who had moved out of the family home and was seeking a divorce, was not in the house at the time of the shooting, police said.

CSUN baseball coach Mike Batesole said he increased John Wilson’s partial scholarship last week so he could afford to move out of his home and into an apartment near campus.

“He didn’t come to us asking for money,” Batesole said. “He just had a little problem so we decided that it would be a good idea.”

The teenager was a standout baseball player at Los Angeles Baptist High School in North Hills. A pitcher and infielder, he won the Most Valuable Player award in the Alpha League during his junior and senior seasons.

As a senior last spring, he was one of 13 players named to The Times’ All-Valley baseball team. The Southern Section of the California Interscholastic Federation, which includes more than 400 schools, named Wilson to one of its all-star teams as well. Wilson also played in the Bernie Milligan game, an annual all-star game featuring the best high school senior baseball players in the Valley and eastern Ventura County.

“He’s the type of kid that, whatever he puts his mind to, he does very well, whether it’s athletics or academics,” said Mark Bates, who coached Wilson in baseball and football at L.A. Baptist.

Wilson, who accepted a scholarship to CSUN last spring, impressed Batesole in individual workouts this fall. “He’s a first-class kid,” Batesole said. “He gets his work done in practice with pride. If the season were to start today, he’d be the starting third baseman.”

Monday would have been Wilson’s first full practice with the Matador baseball team.