Police have arrested a man for allegedly gunning down his father, a military officer with a colonel’s rank, and reducing the body to ashes by setting fire to his Riyadh home.

Col. Fawaz Al-Maiman, assistant spokesman of the Riyadh police, said the Civil Defense received information about the fire on Monday.

The blaze had gutted the first floor of a villa in the Rawdah district in which the elderly man was living.

However, an autopsy report revealed that the colonel had died prior to the fire.

His son confessed that he had murdered the officer and set fire to the villa in order to mislead neighbors and cover the evidence.

The suspect said it was his father’s continuous bad treatment that had provoked him into killing him.