Boy admits to killing sleeping stranger when he was 7: Texas sheriff
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(WJW) – A Texas boy, now 10, who admitted to detectives that he shot and killed a stranger in an RV park when he was 7 years old, isn’t facing murder charges, according to the Gonzales County Sheriff’s Office.
In January 2022, sheriff’s deputies were called to the Lazy J RV Park in Nixon, Texas for reports of an unresponsive man.
According to investigators, the RV park owner checked on the man after receiving a call from Holmes Foods that one of his tenants didn’t show up to work for two days.
The victim, Brandon O’Quinn Rasberry, 32, was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head. The Travis County Medical Examiner ruled Rasberry’s death a homicide.
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He had only been living at the RV park for four days when he was killed, the sheriff’s office said.
After speaking to possible witnesses, all leads in the murder went cold at the time.
More than two years later, on April 12, the sheriff’s office received a call from a principal at Nixon Smiley Independent Schools. The principal told investigators that a 10-year-old student there threatened to kill another student on the bus the evening before.
When a sheriff’s deputy got there, school officials told him the student claimed to have shot and killed a man two years ago, according to a press release.
Investigators say the boy was taken to a child advocacy center, where he described the murder in detail.
The boy told investigators he was visiting his grandfather at the RV park when he took his grandfather’s pistol from the glove box in his truck.
He admitted to going into Rasberry’s RV, noticing him sleeping and shooting him in the head, according to the sheriff’s office.
The child told investigators he had never met the victim, only noticing him walking around the RV earlier that day. He also said the man didn’t do anything to upset him, according to investigators.
Investigators learned that the gun involved in the shooting had been pawned by the child’s grandfather. They found it at the pawn shop in Seguin, Texas and took it in as evidence, the sheriff’s office said.
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The child, who was placed on a 72-hour emergency detention, was taken to a psychiatric hospital in San Antonio. He was later released and charged with terroristic threat in connection to the school bus incident.
Investigators say the boy won’t being charged with murder because he was only seven at the time of the shooting. According to Texas Penal Code 8.07, a child doesn’t have criminal culpability until they are at least 10.
Gonzales County Juvenile Probation placed the child in detention as he awaits a court date.
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