Victim Brandon Rasberry (left inset in a photo from his Facebook page), (right) an aerial view of the Lazy J Ranch and RV Park as seen in a video posted on its Facebook page in 2018.
A now 10-year-old child in Texas facing a charge for threatening to kill a fellow student during a school bus altercation separately admitted to school officials after the incident that he fatally shot a sleeping stranger years ago at an RV park in Nixon, just one week before he turned 8, authorities allege.
According to the Gonzales County Sheriff’s Office, the shocking development in the unsolved January 2022, murder of 32-year-old Brandon O’Quinn Rasberry began with an April 11 school bus dispute between the 10-year-old boy and another student in the Nixon-Smiley Consolidated Independent School District. The sheriff’s office said that school officials contacted authorities the next day — but not just about an alleged threat to kill.
“When the Deputy arrived he spoke with school officials who informed the Deputy the child made a statement that he shot and killed a man two years ago,” the sheriff’s office said Thursday, before pointing out that they cannot bring murder charges in this case under Texas law because a “child does not have criminal culpability until they reach the age of ten years old.”
The juvenile faces a terroristic threat charge related to the bus incident, however.
Authorities said that the student, under questioning by school officials about the alleged bus threat, began to describe Rasberry’s death at the Lazy J RV Park, which took place just four days after the victim moved there.
Investigators found that Rasberry had been shot once the head but they uncovered no clues about who could have killed him by checking cellphone data. That’s because, authorities now say, the person who killed Rasberry was a complete stranger to him.
“Investigators determined based on the information the child told the school, the child may have knowledge about the murder of Brandon. The child was transported to a child advocacy center where a forensic interview was conducted. During the interview the ten year old child described in detail that two years ago he shot and killed a man in a trailer in Nixon, Texas,” the sheriff’s office said, emphasizing that the juvenile had confirmed details only the killer would know.
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The child allegedly confessed that he was visiting his grandpa’s place in the Lazy J RV Park on Jan. 16, 2022, when he decided to grab a gun from the glove box in relative’s truck, went to Rasberry’s RV and shot the victim in the head as he slept, and then put the firearm back in the truck as if nothing had happened.
The suspected shooter allegedly admitted that the extent he knew Rasberry was as a stranger he happened to see outside that day. Nor did the victim do anything whatsoever to make the suspect “mad,” investigators said.
“When asked, the child stated he had never met Brandon, and did not know who he was although he had observed him walking around the RV earlier in the day,” authorities said. “The child was also asked if he was mad at Brandon for some reason or if Brandon had ever done anything to him to make him mad, the child stated no.”
The sheriff’s office said that they tracked down the gun at a pawn shop the day after the “child informed investigators during the interview the gun had been pawned by his grandfather.” Thereafter, the 10-year-old was evaluated at a San Antonio-area psychiatric hospital before he was subjected to juvenile detention in the bus threat case, authorities said.
Brandon Rasberry’s obituary listed his date of death as Jan. 19, 2022, which is the day after police said he was found dead. Authorities detailed that the Lazy J RV Park’s owner was the one who found Rasberry dead on Jan. 18, 2022, after the victim’s employer worried that it’d been two days since Rasberry last showed up for work.
Rasberry’s longtime girlfriend Brandy Kamer spoke with the Gonzales Inquirer about her “shock” that someone so “thoughtful,” “intelligent” and “hard-working” was shot to death for not apparent reason.
“We hope they find who did this and justice is served,” Kamer reportedly said.
The sheriff’s office now claims to know who killed Rasberry, but justice is another story.
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