KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The East Tennessee man who choked the life out of his father in a 2018 drunken confrontation said he loved his dad and thinks about him as his protector and "best friend".
Joshua Dean Dozier, 29, said in a statement for a Department of Correction presentence report that he can't remember the night of Jan. 13, 2018, when he killed Dean Dozier with a chokehold in his father's South Knoxville apartment.
He does know his father didn't approve of him drinking.
"I live every day with the loss and pain of not having my dad," Dozier said in the statement submitted to TDOC. "I wish I would have never drank and this night would have never happened. I will carry the loss of my dad with me the rest of my life..."
Dozier faces sentencing Thursday before Knox County Criminal Court Judge Scott Green.
He was tried in November for first-degree murder, for which he would have faced life in prison. A Knox County jury instead convicted him of the lesser crime of voluntary manslaughter, a felony for which he faces three to 15 years in prison.
Dean Dozier, 48, a Knox County Sheriff's Office corrections officer, went over the night of his killing to check on his son, who was staying at a Gayview Lane apartment that Dean Dozier rented.
Friends and family said the younger Dozier had been drinking and "talking crazy."
Dean Dozier was recovering from pneumonia when he went to check on his son, according to his girlfriend, Jennifer Rose.
The Doziers ended up in a violent struggle, according to neighbors and police reports. The woman who lived directly above the apartment said she heard Joshua Dozier yelling, "Dad, aren't you proud of me!" and "You're turning blue."
When the first Knoxville police officer arrived to find out what was going on, Dozier opened the apartment door and declared that his father had been beating him since he was age 10, records state. He also threw a cellphone at the officer and told him to use it to call his father if he wanted. He then slammed and locked the door, records state.
The officer could see through a window Dean Dozier lying on the floor. His son finally decided to cooperate and came out.
Authorities found Dean Dozier dead on the apartment's kitchen floor.
In the course of their homicide investigation, KPD talked with Dozier's mother, Karen Allen. The parents were divorced.
Allen said father and son were "best friends" and that Dean Dozier hadn't been abusive to his son. She recalled that when she argued with Dean Dozier that Joshua Dozier would step in between them and that Dean Dozier "would take him down to the ground like (Joshua Dozier) was an inmate," records state.
Dozier, at the time he killed his father, had recently broken up with a girlfriend and was taking it hard, according to court records.
Dozier said in his presentence statement that his father "taught me everything I know."
His father disapproved of alcohol consumption, he said. Police found an empty bottle of tequila and an empty 12-count box of Michelob Ultra in a trash can in the apartment.
"My dad had expectations of me even as an adult, one of which was no drinking. If you broke his rules or his standards, he would become mad or angry. His way of punishment was always physical. And I broke one of his rules by drinking on January 13, 2018," his presentence statement reads.
According to the younger Dozier, his father was ready to fight him the night he killed him.
In the presentence report, submitted for Judge Green for review, Dozier said he was a "kind, caring, hardworking son and brother, because that's who my dad brought us up to be."
