Casual Visit Suddenly Turns Lethal Dead Man’s Friend Says He Just Wanted To Collect Debt

Dale Tomlinson said he dropped by his friend’s house Sunday for money, not murder.

Tomlinson, 37, said Dennis Rose owed him $125 for a set of metric truck tools. He said he swung by Rose’s house at 3828 N. Atlantic shortly after 11 a.m. to see if his friend finally could pay up.

When Rose said he didn’t have the money, Tomlinson asked him when he would.

That’s when, Tomlinson said, a teenager Tomlinson had met only four hours earlier walked up and shot Rose, 33, in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun.

“I was going to give him a ride to his hotel,” Tomlinson said of Jerome Grant, 18, who Tomlinson had met at a friend’s house. “But first I told him this guy owed me some money and I’m going to stop by and collect it.”

The two pulled up in an alley behind Rose’s house, where Rose was working on his pickup. Tomlinson said he got out of his own truck and Grant waited in the passenger seat.

Tomlinson knew Grant had a gun with him but said he had made sure the teenager unloaded it before getting into his pickup.

“He had (ammunition) with him, but the gun wasn’t loaded when we were in the truck together,” Tomlinson said.

When the teenager climbed out with the gun, Rose saw him first, Tomlinson said.

“All of the sudden, Dennis had this knife to me and was holding me around my neck,” Tomlinson said. Police said Rose held the blade in front of Tomlinson and told the teenager several times to drop the gun.

When Tomlinson managed to break free, Grant - who has been convicted three times for assault - allegedly fired the gun from less than a foot away.

“I sat there and watched my friend die,” Tomlinson said. “I yelled at the kid, and he just took off.”

An off-duty police officer was driving west on Garland near Jim Dandy Donuts as the shooting occurred. He saw Grant running in an alley, gave chase and caught him.

Detectives said Monday they believe the murder was a surprise to Tomlinson, who stayed at the house with the victim’s family until police arrived. He consoled Rose’s wife and made sure her son was taken to a neighbor’s house immediately after the shooting, police said.

Earlier suspicions that the murder was drug-related appear to be unfounded, detectives said. Neighbors had been writing down license numbers of cars coming to Rose’s house. They believed drugs were being sold there.

“We have no evidence that says that place was a drug house,” said Capt. Roger Bragdon.

Grant, who has an address in Sun City, Ariz., is being held at the Spokane County Jail for first-degree murder. On Monday, a judge set his bail at $500,000.

, DataTimes