NIXON, Texas (TCD) — A 10-year-old boy reportedly confessed to fatally shooting a 32-year-old stranger while the man was sleeping two years ago.
According to a news release from the Gonzales County Sheriff’s Office, on Jan. 18, 2022, the owner of Lazy J RV Park learned one of his tenants, Brandon Rasberry, had failed to show up to work for two days. After knocking on Rasberry’s trailer without an answer, the owner entered and found the tenant deceased inside before reporting it to the sheriff’s office.
Deputies responded and determined Rasberry had been fatally shot once in the head. An autopsy showed he also suffered minor graze wounds, but officials found no other trauma on his body. Investigators allege Rasberry had been dead for two days before deputies arrived.
Investigators obtained items of evidence at the scene and sent them to the Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Laboratory in Austin. Officials also searched the victim’s cellphone location data, but it produced no leads.
Several months later, on Friday, April 12, a principal from Nixon Smiley Independent School District reported that a 10-year-old boy threatened to hurt and kill another student on a bus. A deputy responded to the school and spoke to the child. During the interview, the boy reportedly said he fatally shot a man two years ago.
The sheriff’s office determined the child may have had information about Rasberry’s shooting death, and deputies transported him to a child advocacy center for a forensic interview. According to deputies, the boy detailed how he fatally shot a man in a trailer in 2022, which was consistent with Rasberry’s death.
The child reportedly told investigators that on Jan. 16, 2022, he was visiting his grandfather at the Lazy J RV Park, where Rasberry also lived. The 10-year-old, who was 7 at the time, allegedly grabbed a gun from his grandfather’s vehicle and then went into Rasberry’s RV.
The victim was reportedly sleeping when the child allegedly fired at Rasberry, shooting him once in the head. As he was leaving the RV, the child reportedly fired the gun again, striking the couch, and then he returned the weapon to the glovebox where he found it.
According to the sheriff’s office, the child admitted he didn’t know the victim and had never met the man. The child reportedly told officials he wasn’t mad at the victim, and Rasberry never did anything to make the child angry.
Investigators recovered the firearm the boy had used at a pawn shop in Sequin, Texas. Through testing the spent shell casings at the scene and comparing it to the recovered gun, the sheriff’s office confirmed the firearm was used to kill the victim.
Deputies said they placed the child on 72-hour emergency detention, and he was transported to a psychiatric hospital in San Antonio to undergo treatment and evaluation. According to the sheriff’s office, he was released from the hospital and then booked into detention by Gonzales County Juvenile Probation for terroristic threat stemming from the bus incident.
Deputies noted that because the boy was 7 years old when he allegedly killed the man, officials will not file murder charges due to a penal code that says a “child does not have criminal culpability until they reach the age of 10 years old.”
Before his death, Rasberry reportedly worked for Holmes Foods for three months and had recently moved to Lazy J RV Park several days before he was found dead.
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Tyler Mitchell