‘I told you we weren’t going to stop, son!’

Brenham resident Laura Fontenot keeps a photo of her beloved nephew Brandon Rasberry on her refrigerator and speaks to it every day since he was killed more than two years ago in Nixon.

She talks to her nephew and assures him he is loved, has not been forgotten and that his murder will be solved someday.

On Thursday, April 18, she was finally able to reassure her nephew, whom she helped raise and helped name and called ‘B,’ that her promise was not made in vain.

“This photo sits on my refrigerator to keep him in my thoughts every day that we were not going to stop,” Fontenot said. “He’s never out of our thoughts and he’s definitely not out of mind. I look at him every day and I talk to him every day.

“When this came out and my sister called me on Thursday, I put my hand on his face and told him, ‘I told you we weren’t going to stop, son!’ But now, we’re really just beginning because of the situation.”

After more than two years of fruitless leads and clues that did not pan out, the Gonzales County Sheriff’s Office finally got the break it was looking for in solving Rasberry’s homicide when a 10-year-old Nixon-Smiley student threatened a classmate on a bus one week earlier on Thursday, April 11.

That one event set in motion a chain-reaction of events that culminated with the discovery that the boy had shot and killed Rasberry on Jan. 16, 2022 — when he was just a week shy of his own eighth birthday.

The motive for the slaying remains unclear. The boy admits he held no animosity towards Rasberry and didn’t even know him when he took his grandfather’s 9mm pistol from a truck glovebox, snuck into Rasberry’s trailer and shot him once in the head as the 32-year-old Rasberry was sleeping. He would fire another bullet into the couch, leave the trailer, put away the gun and his responsibility for this appalling, secret act would not surface for another two years.

“I guess that's what’s kind of disturbing to us also is that he was seven at the time,” Fontenot said. “We try to look back on our children at seven. I mean, when ‘B’ was seven, he didn't even have a BB gun! So, it just goes to show, I guess, how these generations are changing. Right? Like my own son, you know, whenever he found out, he's like, ‘Mom, I'm just sick. I’m sick.’

“We couldn't cry. When my sister made her first phone call to me, after leaving Gonzales County Sheriff's Department getting the news, we couldn't be angry, we couldn't cry. You know, it was like, ‘Okay, we've got to do something,’ and then to know that he couldn't be charged with murder!”

Remembering Brandon

Fontenot held back tears as she lovingly remembered her nephew’s love of the outdoors and kind-hearted nature.

“He loved camping. He loved fishing. He was such a free spirit,” Fontenot said. “He didn't have an enemy and he would give you the shirt off his back. He never tired of learning new things.

“He was definitely a hard worker. He loved his sons and he loved his nieces. We were a tight-knit family. If one person went camping, we all went — all the time. I mean, when you say Sunday funday or people talk about Sunday fundays, this was like full weekends.”

Fontenot was a major part of her nephew’s life and even suggested to her sister Charlene Hadley Munn his middle name — O’Quinn.

“He was like a son to me and at one point I helped my sister raise him,” Fontenot said. “I’m not sure about how he got his first name. Someone asked me about that the other day. I think my sister was the one who said Brandon, but then said, ‘I need a middle name,” and I suggested O’Quinn. It came from our mother’s mother’s father, so our great-grandpa, his middle name was O’Quinn.

“Three years ago, I went through a stroke. And whenever I got home here in Brenham, he was the first one to call. ‘Aunt Laura, if you need anything, you know, I'm here.’”

Fontenot said Brandon did not finish school at Brenham, but rather was enrolled in Gary Job Corps, where he earned his welding certificate. Some of this was due to another part of Brandon’s gentle nature — a wish to avoid confrontation from those who sought to cause him harm.

“He went there because Brandon didn’t like confrontation and back at the time, he was a little bit overweight and he was being bullied (in school),” Fontenot said. “So my sister found a place that he might enjoy and it was better to see him succeed than just quit.”

After several other jobs, including working as an OTR truck driver, Brandon eventually would find himself working at Holmes Foods in Nixon, where he earned a reputation for being a valued employee who not only didn’t skip work, but enjoyed his new work home.

“He used to be there before anyone,” Fontenot said of Rasberry. “His supervisor said he was always ‘Johnny on the spot.’ He was there and he would open shop for everyone in the mornings. He would put on his music and he was ready. All of us love karaoke and ‘B’ loved singing.”

The last members of his family to see Rasberry alive were his grandparents, who helped him move into the RV he proudly rented in Nixon, which was to be a new beginning. He would only get to spend four days in the RV before he was killed.

“They drove away on a Thursday,” Fontenot said. “I’m the first phone call, through Facebook, through a friend of mine, who said, ‘I'm so sorry for your loss of your nephew.’ And we didn't even know what the hell took place.

“This got out on Facebook (before we knew). I was the one that had to tell my sister that she's lost her son and I've lost my nephew. And then I was the first person to call our mother and tell her … ‘Mom, I need you to go because, you know, I'm being told that your grandson’s been murdered.’”

Fontenot said she couldn’t understand why someone would target her nephew, wondering if “he met his maker and, for the first time in his life, he was actually having to defend himself.”

“Because he didn't never have altercations anywhere,” Fontenot said. “And we were like, ‘Really, you just move in and you already made an enemy and you never had an enemy before?

“They went through ‘B’’s phone and called numerous people asking, ‘What kind of man was he,’ when they were looking for something at the end of the day to try to explain. And now that it’s come out, it's almost like this doesn't make sense, but it makes sense that a … child killed an innocent person because nobody else had a problem with ‘B.’”

In what is a case of extremely good timing or divine intervention, Brandon’s sister-in-law, Emily Fojtik, posted on the “What's happening in Nixon Texas?” Facebook page on April 14, 2022, seeking answers to Rasberry’s unsolved murder.

“Hello Nixon community! My Brother-in-law Brandon Rasberry, was murder on January 18, 2022 at Lazy J Rv Park. We are still looking for answers. The family has lost faith in the Gonzales Sheriff's Department and have had to start our own investigation. From the very start, there was a lot of suspicion surrounding the RV park. He moved into the park on January 15th, and by the 18th he was gone. If anyone has any information, please reach out to Jonathan Fojtik through a private message. The family would like to have closure for Brandon. He was such a special soul; kind, giving, and loving.”

“Apparently at the time that this post was going out, this child was being already held in questioning for my nephew's murder,” Fontenot said. “And on Monday morning, my sister receives a phone call from Sergeant (Jared) Brumme (the lead investigator on the case). And she calls me and says, ‘Sister, we’ve got to keep this under wraps. But I’ve got to meet on Thursday with Brumme.’ Wow, we post this and probably at the time that this posting went out, this child was being questioned.”

Petition for change

Fontenot said the family is outraged that criminal law in Texas does not allow for children to be charged with violent crimes if they commit them while under the age of 10. Her nephew’s killer is avoiding culpability for his actions because of his age — he was just a week shy of his eighth birthday when he pulled the trigger.

A family friend, Julie Hintz, began a petition at change.org, which asks the Texas House and Texas Senate to “Amend in ‘rare cases’ Texas Penal Code 8.07 to Hold Juvenile Murderers Accountable.” It had 249 signatures since it began on April 18.

“Somebody's got to be held accountable. And what is slapping me in the face that we have a stupid Texas Penal Code that we can't go after a child at this age,” Fontenot said. “We’ve got to start right now and we've got to change this law in Brandon's name, even if this has got to go all the way to the Capitol. We are not stopping. Somewhere, somebody's going to be accountable.

“It may have to be with a law change so this doesn't happen to any innocent person again, because that really disgusted me that he just walked in and shot my nephew while he was asleep and then turned around and make another shot into the couch. The family wants someone held accountable. Because someone knows more than what they're saying. We're gonna try our damnedest to change this law.”

While a Michigan mother was recently convicted of involuntary manslaughter when her 15-year-old son killed four fellow students at his high school, Texas’ parental responsibility laws do not cover personal injury liability. Unless the parent took part in committing the crime, they cannot be charged with the actions their children took.

State law will allow families of victims to bring a personal injury claim against parents for damages a child caused on the grounds of parental negligence. They can also sue a minor’s parents for negligence or breach of duty if it can be proven that the parents knew of a child’s propensity for the harmful behavior before it occurred and failed to do anything to prevent an injury or property damage.