Son Held After O.C. Probation Officer Is Slain

An Orange County probation officer was found shot to death in his Norco home, and police have arrested his son, whom they described as a 17-year-old student at Villa Park High School.

The body of Robert L. Swearingen, 52, was found in his garage just after noon Wednesday. He had been shot in the upper body with his own .38-caliber service revolver, said Mark Lohman, a spokesman for the Riverside Sheriff’s Department.

His son, whom police declined to name, was taken into custody when he drove up to the home in his father’s pickup truck while investigators were at the scene, Lohman said.

Authorities said the shooting apparently occurred after the pair argued late Friday night, the last day of school at Villa Park. When the elder Swearingen didn’t show up at work for three days, his supervisor asked deputies to go to the home in the 2400 block of Kips Korner.

Robert Swearingen moved to the small brown house in Norco, a rural town in Riverside County north of Corona, several years ago after his divorce, friends said. A supervising probation officer, he had worked for the Orange County Probation Department since 1973.

Authorities said the son lived alternately with his mother in Orange and his father.

Deputies said neighbors reported seeing the son at his father’s home several times in the days before the decomposing body was discovered. Deputies said it is unclear if the youth had been staying there.

“Our officers stopped him, talked with him, took him to the station and questioned him throughout the night,” Lohman said. “Then we arrested him on suspicion of shooting his father.”

The boy remains in custody at Riverside Juvenile Hall. Lohman said it has not been determined whether he will be charged as an adult. That decision is up to the district attorney’s office and Juvenile Court, he said.

At the Probation Department in Santa Ana on Thursday, employees who were closest to Robert Swearingen met with a crisis counselor.

“It’s been very difficult for our staff,” said John Robinson, Swearingen’s supervisor.

For years, Swearingen had worked in some of the tougher areas of Garden Grove, personally monitoring drug addicts and dealers of heroin and PCP.

In 1991, he was put in charge of the county’s electronic monitoring program, in which probationers under house arrest wear ankle cuffs that alert authorities if they leave their homes. He was also in charge of a work furlough program that eventually was scrapped following the Orange County bankruptcy.

“He was a very hard-working, dedicated individual, very creative, loved fishing,” Robinson said. “This was just a very devastating situation for all his colleagues and friends in the department. Anybody dying at 52, that’s a life cut short under any circumstance.”

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Times staff writers Tina Nguyen, Geoff Boucher, David Haldane, Liz Seymour and Bob Rohwer contributed to this story.