A Rocky Top man called his neighbor 'crazy' on Facebook. Then, he was shot to death.

Travis Dorman | Knoxville

ROCKY TOP — On Nov. 19, Davey Roach Jr. took to Facebook to air concerns about his neighbor. In a two-minute video, he said the man carried a gun at all times and had trained a security camera on his house just to aggravate him. The local police, Roach said, suggested he dismiss George Patterson as crazy.

"Of course he's crazy," Roach said. "Some people know when to make the right decisions to use a gun, but a crazy man will shoot you at any time, and that's George."

Four days later, authorities say Patterson shot Roach dead after an argument in front of Patterson's home in Rocky Top, a small town in Anderson County with a population of about 1,800.

Now, Patterson, 67, faces a charge of first-degree murder — upgraded from the initial charge of criminal homicide. But first he must undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether he is mentally fit to stand trial, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Roach's family members are left wondering how it came to this.

"We were excited about getting married and enjoying the rest of our lives," his fiancée, Felicia Adkins, told Knox News. "We were just happy together. We had plans for the future. George had threatened us, but we never thought that it would actually come down to it."

Shooting came after feud, fiancée says

Adkins lived with Roach, 43, in an apartment above his mother's beauty salon on Willow Lane. Roach's mother lives behind the salon, while Patterson lived next door.

Adkins said she witnessed the shooting and described it as the culmination of a feud between neighbors that escalated for more than a year.

"It all started over mowing grass," she said. "There's a little strip of land in between the two houses. Some if it was Davey's mom's, and some of it was the neighbor's."

For years, Roach, his mother and Patterson got along well and helped each other out from time to time. Patterson would attend holiday dinners with the family, Adkins said, and he and Roach would take turns mowing the strip of land.

Last year, Adkins said, Patterson's attitude inexplicably changed, and he angrily told Roach to stay off his property.

"And it escalated from there," she said. "Every time that we were outside, it was an argument. At first, it was just screaming and yelling, then it turned to threatening. 'I’m going to kill you.' He hated him, just calling him all kinds of names and threatening to kill me, threatening to kill his mom, threatening to kill all of us."

Adkins said Patterson installed security cameras around his home, including one that appeared to stay pointed toward the beauty salon. Roach, she said, viewed that as an invasion of his family's privacy.

"He was trying to figure out what we could do about everything, the whole situation," Adkins said. "We've had to call the cops many times over there because (Patterson) would start yelling and screaming and threatening and everything."

Roach said in his Facebook video that "every time we try to get something done about it, the cops just slap him on the wrist and let him go and say, 'Well, you've just got to look over George, he's crazy.'"

In the caption, Roach wrote that the Rocky Top Police Department should do something "before he has one of his episodes and does something he will regret."

Rocky Top Police Chief Jim Shetterly has not responded to repeated requests for comment from Knox News. Patterson had no prior criminal history in Tennessee, according to records from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

BREAKING NEWS, DIRECTLY AT YOUR FINGERTIPS.

Download the FREE Knox News mobile app for the latest breaking news in East Tennessee and across the state.

'Everything's been a blur'

On Nov. 22, Roach made several Facebook posts about Patterson. They included photos of signs he said Patterson had left outside his own home. One read, "Be a good citizen and report elder abuse at: 911. Sadly family is the usual offender." Another simply read, "Stupid."

The next morning, Adkins said she and Roach were driving by when Patterson began yelling at them and threatening to kill Roach's mother. Roach, who was in the passenger's seat, told his fiancée to stop the truck.

Roach got out of the vehicle, stood in the road and argued with Patterson for a minute, Adkins said. Then Patterson pulled a handgun. Roach wasn't armed, Adkins said — he didn't even own a gun.

"Davey said, 'I don't care what you do with it. You can shove it up your (expletive) for all I care,'" she said.

Roach had turned to get back into the truck when Patterson pointed the gun at his back and fired "four or five" times, Adkins said. She recalling slipping out of the driver's seat and hunkering down next to the truck. She saw Roach fall, then ran to him and called 911.

"And that was it," she said. "The rest is kind of a blur. An ambulance came, the cops came. Everything's been a blur since then."

An arrest warrant written by an agent with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation — which is looking into the shooting — says Patterson admitted to firing his gun but claimed he initially aimed "at the ground between Roach's legs."

"The defendant was then struck in the leg by a Sprite can that was thrown by Roach," the warrant reads, a detail Adkins disputes. "The defendant then fired his weapon several more times striking Roach. Roach died as a result of the gunshot wounds."

Roach's mother, Helen Lane, his fiancée and others showed up at Anderson County General Sessions Court in Oak Ridge on Tuesday to see Patterson stand before a judge. He's been jailed since the shooting, and is being represented by the public defender's office.

But prosecutors told the family at the last minute that Patterson wouldn't be there because his hearing had been reset to March.

Outside the courthouse, in the cold, Lane said she didn't have much to say about the case.

"I just want justice," the mother said.