In the early morning hours of a December day in White Pine, Tennessee, a chilling 911 call pierced the quiet. On the other end of the line, a man admitted to having just shot his mother. When law enforcement officers arrived at the home in the 3000 block of Hardy Road shortly after 1:30 a.m. on Monday, December 13, 2021, they found a grim scene that confirmed the caller's confession.
Inside a car parked in the driveway, they discovered the body of 48-year-old Christa Marla Tipton Hicks,
a female who had formerly lived in Unicoi. She had succumbed to a fatal gunshot wound. The man who had made the emergency call, her 26-year-old son, Anthony Hicks, was found sitting calmly on the front porch of the residence. There, he was taken into custody without incident by the Jefferson County Sheriff's deputies.
The investigation that followed involved the White Pine Police Department and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, working in conjunction with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. Anthony Hicks was subsequently arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the death of his mother. He was then booked into the Jefferson County Detention Center.
While the authorities have not publicly released any information regarding a possible motive for the shooting or the specific events that transpired leading up to the tragic incident, the case has left the community in shock. The abrupt and violent end to Christa Tipton Hicks's life at the hands of her own son has left many unanswered questions. The legal proceedings are expected to shed more light on the circumstances surrounding this devastating family tragedy.
