A 10-year-old admitted to shooting and killing a man in a Gonzales County RV park more than two years ago, and told investigators he didn’t know the man and had no reason to kill him, according to the Gonzales County Sheriff's Office.
Brandon O'Quinn Rasberry, 32, was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head on Jan. 18, 2022, in his RV at Lazy J RV Park in Nixon, about 45 miles east of downtown San Antonio.
An autopsy found he'd been shot once in the head and had two minor graze wounds, one on each hand, and had been dead for approximately two days, the Gonzales County Sheriff's Office said. All leads were exhausted in an investigation that followed, and the case remained unsolved.
Last Friday, the sheriff's office received a call from the Nixon-Smiley Consolidated Independent School District, reporting that a 10-year-old student had threatened to assault and kill another student on a bus the day before. When a deputy arrived, school officials reported the boy had also claimed he shot and killed a man two years ago.
During an interview with investigators, the boy reported that he was visiting his grandfather on Jan. 16, 2022, who lived at the same RV park as Rasberry, a few lots away, the sheriff's office said.
The child, who was seven years old at the time, said he took a pistol from the glove box of his grandfather's truck and entered Rasberry's RV, where he found the man sleeping in his bed. He told the investigators he shot him once in the head, and then as he was leaving the RV fired a shot into the couch, the sheriff's office said. He said he returned the gun to the truck after he left.
In the interview, the boy said he'd never met Rasberry and didn't know him, but had seen him walking around that day.
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 sheriff's office said, and the boy said no.
The pistol was located at a pawn shop last Friday, and a forensic analysis involving shell casings from the crime scene confirmed the gun was used to kill Rasberry, the sheriff's office said.
The boy, whose name was not released, will not be charged in connection with the 2022 shooting, because Texas law doesn't allow for criminal culpability before the age of 10, Gonzales County officials said. He will face charges of making a terroristic threat related to the school bus incident last week.
The boy was placed on a 72-hour emergency detention "because of the severity of the crime and because of the continued concern for the child's mental wellbeing," the office said. He was then taken to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation and treatment, then placed in detention by Gonzales County Juvenile Probation to await his court date.
Rasberry worked for Holmes Foods, a poultry processing plant in Nixon, and had moved his RV to the park four days before he was found dead, the sheriff's office said.
According to his obituary, he was born in Brenham.
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