David Brom was sixteen when he would murder his entire family with an axe in Minnesota. According to court documents police went to the Brom residence after they were notified about a rumor floating around the school that something terrible happened in the Brom home.
Police would discover the bodies of David’s father, mother, brother and sister. David and his older brother were missing from the home. Initially police thought that David Brom had been kidnapped however soon after a female school mate would tell police that David confessed to murdering his family. Apparently David Brom was involved in an argument with his father and once his father was asleep David would kill him and his mother. David Brom was heading to his sister’s bedroom when he found her and his younger brother in the hallway and murdered them both. This teen killer was sentenced to three life sentences in prison
David Brom 2023 Information
MNDOC Offender ID:146854
Name:David Brom
Birth Date:10/03/1971
Current Status:Incarcerated as of 10/16/1989. Currently at MCF Stillwater.
Sentence Date:10/16/1989
Anticipated Release Date:Life –
.Expiration Date: Life
David Brom Other News
Sunday marks a dark anniversary in the city of Rochester. David Brom brutally murdered his dad, mom, brother and sister with an ax in their home on the outskirts of Rochester 30 years ago.
Olmsted County Sheriff Kevin Torgerson was a deputy at the time and first on the scene. When he reflects on his 34-year career in law enforcement, there are countless cases he can recall, but undoubtedly none compare to February 18, 1988.
“All I knew was that there was something wrong, and all I remember of the call was that David Brom had made some kind of threat to his dad,” Torgerson said.
Bernard and Paulette Brom had what looked like the American dream, a nice home on the northwest side of Rochester, four children: Joe, 19, David, 16, Diane, 13, and Ricky, 9. They were actively involved in their church, and from the outside, the Broms looked to be a typical middle-class family. However, David had a dark side, just how dark, not even his family knew.
“It was just my circumstances that day to take that call and stuff happens,” Torgerson said.
At the time, Torgerson had only been in law enforcement for four years, only two in the city of Rochester, when he was dispatched on a call to do a welfare check at the Brom home.
“I knew which house it was, but that I was just going to wait for my backup. We were losing daylight at the time, 5:23 p.m. – I think about that time – 6:00 it’s getting pretty dark, so I got out, and I waited he got out his car and I said well here is what I got, told him the stuff I already knew. announced ourselves ‘sheriff’s office’ and of course, nobody answered,” Torgerson said. “At this point with no one responding, that was the point where really it just … now we got a bad deal here.”
Torgerson goes on to explain going heading to the bedrooms upstairs.
“And when I got to the top of the step, and where I could see up on the floor, then that’s when I saw what turned out to be both females, their feet laying there,” Torgerson said. “And I whispered then to my partner, ‘we’ve got two bodies up here,’ two females, did a quick peek and I remember looking left, it was quite a sight.”
You can hear in his voice, the trained law enforcement officer’s description of just the facts until he gets to the last bedroom.
“So I walked in further and then I got in just to the corner of that little entry of what was Ricky’s room, and he was laying in bed in a fetal position, and again, massive injury to his head, multiple other injuries across his body, and he’s laying there clutching a little blanket.”
In the days that followed, Torgerson and his wife left for an anniversary getaway, the weight of what was inside that house was heavy. However. for whatever reason, Torgerson said he is able to not let crime scenes haunt or burden him, even the one at the Brom house,
“It was just my circumstances that day to take that call, and stuff happens. you know, whatever it was, it was I was able to find a way to get through it,” he said.
And while he would forever carry with him the images from inside the Brom house that night, they are just that, memories.
“You know I can’t get stuck in that place.”
Joe Brom, the oldest of the children was 19 years old at the time and did not live at home. He ended up moving to New York and became a philosophy teacher. He died two years ago from cancer.
As for David Brom, he remains in the St. Cloud Correctional Facility serving time until he is approximately 70 years old when he will be eligible for parole in 2041.
Today marks another anniversary involving one of the most notorious crimes in recent Minnesota history.
Rochester teenager David Brom was sentenced on this date 30-years ago to three consecutive life terms in prison for the murders of his parents and two of his siblings inside their suburban northwest Rochester home. Under the state laws in effect at the time, Brom is required to serve 17 ½ years for each life sentence for a total of 52 ½ years behind bars before he will be eligible for parole
The day before, October 15th, 1989, David Brom was found guilty of four counts of first-degree murder for the axe murders of Bernard and Paulette Brom, along with 14-year-old Diane and 9-year-old Ricky Brom in the early hours of February 18th, 1988. David Brom, who was 16-years-old, was captured the next day near the northwest Rochester Post Office.
The case attracted national media attention due to the horrific level of violence, Brom’s young age, and a diagnosis of mental illness. He initially faced the charges in juvenile court, but the State Supreme Court later sided with the prosecution and ordered him to stand trial as an adult. He was on trial when he turned 18-years-old and never took the witness stand.
Clay Brewer was seventeen when he murdered a counselor. According to court documents Clay Brewer was sent to a youth treatment center to help him overcome his drug addiction. Five days after his arrive Clay Brewer would attack and fatally beat a male counselor and attacked a female counselor with a piece of rebar. Clay Brewer would take off from the scene in a stolen car however he would be arrested a short time later. This teen killer would be found guilty and sentenced to five years to life.
Clay Brewer 2023 Information
Offender Number: 239132
Offender Name: CLAY HITSON BREWER
DOB: Fri, 20 Aug 1999
Height: 6 Feet 1 Inches
Weight: 200
Sex: M
Location: CENTRAL UTAH CORRECTIONAL FACILITY
Housing Facility: CUCF BOULDER
Parole Date: N/A
Aliases:
CLAY HITSON BREWER
Clay Brewer Other News
An Arizona teen was sentenced to serve five years to life in prison for beating a man to death while at a youth treatment facility in Garfield County in 2016.
Clay Brewer, 19, of Snowflake, Arizona, was sentenced Thursday in 6th District Court in Panguitch for the murder of 61-year-old Jimmy Woolsey on Dec. 6, 2016, while at the Turn-About Ranch rehabilitation facility near Escalante.
According to court records, Brewer pleaded guilty in July to a first-degree felony count of murder and second-degree felony for aggravated assault. The first charge carries a prison term of five years to life, while the second carries a one-to-15-year prison term.
The felony aggravated assault charge stems from Brewer attacking a second Turn-About Ranch staff member after killing Woolsey.
According to police records, Brewer, then 17, told Garfield County Sheriff’s deputies following his arrest that he woke up “heartless.”
His addiction had taken over his life and that it controlled him
Brewer had been at Turn-About Ranch for about five days and said he had “a bad pill addiction,” and later stated “his addiction had taken over his life and that it controlled him.”
Brewer’s mother, who submitted a letter to the court on her son’s behalf, said Brewer had been a “happy and friendly person” since he was very young. He always had a smile on his face and a great sense of humor. He would also get compliments from teachers, friends and others about the “good things he did.”
She also described him as “generous and caring, loving and forgiving.”
However, problems began to arise following the divorce of Brewer’s parents and ended on less-than-amiable terms due to an “ugly custody battle,” Brewer’s mother wrote. She noticed her son started to change when he was 15. He started to hang out with different friends and started drinking alcohol and chewing tobacco, and he occasionally used marijuana and prescription pain pills.
“By the time I was aware of his drug use, he had advanced to cocaine and other illegal drugs,” she wrote.
Brewer’s mother and father decided to have their son admitted to Turn-About Ranch in Utah.
According to police records, after arriving at the rehabilitation facility, Brewer said he had had suicidal thoughts and had drank bleach in an attempt to kill himself.
His mother was made aware of the situation and the pain of withdrawals he was going through.
“The next communication I received was the early morning on December 6, 2016, where I was told of the horrific nightmare that had occurred at the hands of my son,” she wrote.
The morning of Dec. 6, Brewer obtained a piece metal rebar, according to police records.
Woolsey, who had gone outside to check on a group of teens sitting around a campfire, was attacked by Brewer and hit with the rebar multiple times. After Woolsey became unresponsive, Brewer took his wallet and keys. He tried leave the area in Woolsey’s vehicle, but it wouldn’t start.
Brewer told another teen who witnessed the attack not to say anything. However, the other teen told another ranch staff member – Alicia Keller, according to The Salt Lake Tribune – that “Clay hit Jimmy.” Keller went to see what had happened and saw Woolsey on the ground with a sleeping bag on top of him.
While outside, Brewer went after Keller.
“He’s at me full blast hands up with the rebar in his hands and he hit me on top of the head twice,” Keller later told sheriff’s deputies.
Keller ran back into a building where other residents were and kept the door closed so Clay Brewer could not enter. He demanded the keys to her vehicle or else he would “break in” and “kill everyone,” Keller said, according to police records.
Keller gave Clay Brewer her keys and he left. To keep the others safe, she took them out of a back door where they hid behind a building.
According to the police records, Keller had two black eyes and her head in a bandage, and had multiple stitches when deputies spoke to her. She was also distraught and emotionally traumatized from the incident.
“(Brewer) just killed Jimmy,” she said. “He tried to kill me.”
Keller was later praised by the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office for keeping others safe.
Following the assaults, Clay Brewer took Keller’s vehicle and led responding sheriff’s deputies on a high speed chase. The deputies performed a maneuver that caused the vehicle to roll and crash against a tree. They arrested Brewer but not before he made it appear as if he had a gun.
“His plan when the cops caught him was to hold up the ‘iron’ and act like he had a gun,” the deputy wrote.
“‘So I could be shot and killed,’” Brewer said, according to the report.
Clay Brewer went on to tell deputies that, with everything that had happened to him, coupled with coming off of drugs, he had “lost his mind” and allegedly never had a thought of beating anyone. He even described Woolsey as a “great guy” he had only known for two days prior to the assault.
“Oh course, when you’re coming off drugs and alcohol like I was, you lose your mind,” Clay Brewer said. “That’s where I was at. I lost my mind.”
According to The Salt Lake Tribune, emotions ran high in the courtroom as Judge Wallace Lee pronounced Brewer’s sentence and ordered him to prison.
Brewer’s family was present and supportive of the young man who has been described as “an All-American boy” by an aunt in a letter to the judge.
In their letters to Lee on Brewer’s behalf, family members asked for mercy and said how the teen had improved in the two years since the Dec. 6 incident at Turn-About Ranch.
When he had a chance to address the court, Clay Brewer apologized for what happened and said he regretted his actions every day. When he pleaded guilty in July, he told the court he would accept whatever sentence he was given, the Tribune reported.
However, due to the nature of the crime and the impact it had on the surrounding community – Woolsey was touted as a man many people knew and loved – Garfield County Attorney Barry Huntington told the judge a prison sentence was necessary.
Lee, who said he grew up alongside Woolsey and knew his family, also became emotional at one point, according to the Tribune. He told Brewer he didn’t consider him a monster or a bad person, nor did he hate him, yet he hated what the teen had done.
Woolsey left behind a wife and 10-year-old daughter.
Woosley’s widow, Brenda, was present at Brewer’s sentencing hearing and told the court she wanted Brewer to be incarcerated for life, the Tribune reported.
Clay Brewer Other News
Clay Brewer was once a happy kid who loved baseball and making people laugh — until a pain pill addiction sent him spiraling.He once tried to kill himself, then brutally killed another man at a Utah youth ranch in 2016.And for the death of 61-year-old Jimmy Woolsey, Brewer was sentenced Thursday to spend at least five years and possibly the rest of his life in prison.It was an emotional hearing in the Panguitch courtroom, as the community that knew and loved Woolsey wept at the loss of the man who was raised in rural Garfield County, a beloved father and a husband who worked at the ranch to help others. Even the judge became emotional, saying he grew up alongside Woolsey and knew his family well.And then there were those who cried for Brewer.
His family stood by him, penning letters to 6th District Judge Wallace Lee asking for mercy and speaking on his behalf at his Thursday sentencing. Two years after his crimes, they say, he’s clean and getting better. The old Clay, the teen who was so happy and helpful, is still there.But his crimes were too terrible for anything less than a prison sentence.“I want you to know I don’t consider you to be a monster,” the judge told the teen before sending him to prison. “I don’t consider you to be a bad person. I hate what you’ve done. But I don’t hate you.”
Growing up, Clay Brewer was funny, well-behaved and loved playing baseball. The Arizona teen helped other kids at school and coached his younger cousins. An “all-American boy,” an aunt described in court.That all changed when he was 15 years old. He struggled with his parents’ divorce, his mother wrote in a letter to the judge, and she began noticing a change. His friends were different. He started drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana and eventually started taking prescription pills.“I was at a loss for a solution,” his mother, Nikki Carter, wrote. “I felt I had tried everything I knew to help him.”As his drug use increased, Brewer’s parents decided to send him to rehab. They settled on Turn-About Ranch, a private youth-rehabilitation facility in the small south-central Utah town of Escalante.The price tag was hefty — a $15,000 down payment, his mother wrote, and the parents expected to pay $36,000 for his stay.
But they were desperate.“We wanted nothing more than to help our son and save his life,” the mother wrote.During Brewer’s stay at the ranch, he struggled with withdrawals and tried to kill himself by drinking bleach. His mother wrote that she found out later that he was in a part of the ranch where students were not allowed to wear shoes and given very little food. On those cold December days, the teens were allowed to go inside a cabin only to sleep at night.It was on Brewer’s fifth day at the Utah ranch — Dec. 6, 2016 — that he would pick up a metal bar and rock Garfield County.
Clay Brewer woke that morning feeling “heartless,” he would later tell police, like he had lost his mind.It was in those early morning hours when Woolsey came to check in on a group of teens who were sitting around a fire when the attack began. Clay Brewer ran toward the 61-year-old staffer and began hitting his head over and over again with a piece of metal rebar.“I paused,” the teen later told police about the attack. “I couldn’t bear to think about what I had done. I just stood there.”But he didn’t just stand there. The violence continued.As Brewer attacked Woolsey, the other teens rushed to a nearby cabin and alerted another staffer, Alicia Keller.
Trying to hold the door closed, she struggled to keep Clay Brewer out of the cabin, and in the process, the teen beat Keller’s hand and smacked her in the head. She still is disabled from the injuries. Clay Brewer went back to Woolsey’s body, Keller told police, and grabbed the man’s wallet and keys and tried unsuccessfully to start his truck.Keller finally gave Clay Brewer her own car keys so he would leave.From there, Brewer led police on a high speed chase through the rural residential area until police were able to stop his car.After the 17-year-old’s arrest, news of Woolsey’s death and Brewer’s other crimes spread through Escalante and the county.
Garfield County Attorney Barry Huntington said Thursday that so many in the community were left grappling with how something like this could happen. Why Jimmy? Why Alicia?“Jimmy wanted to help people,” Huntington said. “Alicia wanted to help people. That’s why they worked where they worked.”
As Brewer’s case wound its way through the legal system the past two years, the crimes continued to haunt Garfield County residents, Huntington said. Officers who chased Clay Brewer through the neighborhoods, emergency personnel who tried to save Woolsey’s life, the other teens who then witnessed a brutal assault — all were affected.But Huntington also noted at Brewer’s sentencing hearing that the community rallied around the ones who were hurting, providing support to Woolsey’s and Keller’s families.“That’s why I live in Garfield County,” he said. “We live here because we take care of each other. We take care of our own when we get hurt.”Because the crimes impacted so many, Huntington told the judge Thursday that a prison sentence that could keep Brewer behind bars for possibly the rest of his life was necessary
Woolsey’s widow, Brenda Woolsey, said she never wants Clay Brewer to be free again. Her husband’s death has shattered her, she said Thursday, and left her teenage daughter without the man who adored her.“I ask that you receive the same sentence that you gave me,” she read from a letter directed to Brewer. “To be alone.” Clay Brewer, now 19, has spent two years wondering how he could make right what he had done. The first step was pleading guilty in July to murder and aggravated assault instead of going to trial. He said before he was sentenced that he would accept whatever punishment came to him, and he would work to help others and make himself better while in prison.When he pleaded guilty, Brewer apologized in court and asked parents to speak with their children about drug abuse, how the most dangerous substances are often sitting in a medicine cabinet.“It’s a matter of time before they are found and abused potentially by a young child who has no knowledge of these demons that are pressed inside those pills,” he said. “It’s an epidemic not only in my own case but in close friends I used to know who have lost their lives.”
As he apologized, Brewer said he thinks of Woolsey’s widow and prays for her every day. He often thinks of Keller, and hopes she heals and finds happiness. He thinks too of the other youths at Turn-About, how his actions affected their own recoveries.But most of all, he thinks of Jimmy Woolsey.He regrets his actions every day, he said, and will look to Woolsey’s life as an example of how to live his in prison.“I really pray that one day I can meet you and say this to your face and apologize from the bottom of my soul,” Clay Brewer said. “And you may accept my apology not because of my words but how I lived my life after I have taken yours.”
Clay Brewer Other News
A 19-year-old Arizona man was sentenced to prison Thursday for the brutal slaying of one worker and assault on a second staffer at a Southern Utah rehabilitation ranch for troubled teens in 2016.
A 6th District Court judge ordered Clay Brewer to serve at least five years and up to life in prison on the murder conviction and at least one year and up to 15 years for the assault.
The sentences will run concurrently.
Authorities say Brewer, of Snowflake, killed 61-year-old Jimmy Woolsey with a metal fire poker as he tried to escape the Turn-About Ranch in Garfield County five days after he arrived in December 2016.
Brewer injured another staff member by striking her in the head before stealing her car and leading deputies on a brief chase, according to authorities.
After his arrest, Brewer told investigators he had intended to act like he had a gun so police officers would fatally shoot him.
He also said he was coming off an addiction to pills while at the camp and tried to kill himself there by drinking bleach.
According to Brewer, his path to drug abuse began when his parents divorced.
Brewer pleaded guilty to reduced charges of murder and aggravated assault in July, saying he would accept whatever punishment came to him.
At an emotional sentencing hearing in the Panguitch courtroom Thursday, Brewer apologized to the victims and their families.
Brewer’s attorney Ron Yengich said his client’s case is “an object lesson for the extremes that can come from drug abuse.”
“The reality is that he’s like so many other kids out there, and adults. They get involved with opioids and don’t realize the impact it has on their lives and it takes over their lives and changes them into people they would never have been,” Yengich told the Deseret News.
Nathaniel Brazill was just thirteen years old when he fatally shot his teacher. According to court documents Nathaniel would return to his Florida school after being sent home early for throwing a water balloon at a teacher. Brazill would walk up to the teacher and open fire killing the school teacher. At court this teen killer would be found guilty and would be sentenced to twenty eight years in prison. Nathaniel is scheduled to be released from prison in 2028
Nathaniel Brazill 2023 Information
ID Photo
DC Number:
W16443
Name:
BRAZILL, NATHANIEL R
Race:
BLACK
Sex:
MALE
Birth Date:
09/22/1986
Initial Receipt Date:
08/02/2001
Current Facility:
Wakulla Annex
Current Custody:
MINIMUM
Current Release Date:
05/18/2028
Nathaniel Brazill Other News
Nathaniel Brazill’s mother didn’t know whether to cry or smile the moment her teenage son became a convicted murderer but dodged a mandatory life sentence.
Polly Powell said she went numb when the jury’s verdict was read last week as she sat among friends and family in a Palm Beach County courtroom.
“My heart just got still,” she said late Wednesday afternoon, speaking publicly for the first time since the verdict of second-degree murder.
With the trial over, Powell says that she now prays that Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Richard Wennet will be lenient in sentencing him and that one day Lake Worth Middle School teacher Barry Grunow’s family can forgive her 14-year-old son.
“Unless [the Grunows] are forgiving in their hearts, it’s going to be hard to get over this hump in their lives,” she said in a half-hour interview with WPTV-Ch. 5 reporter Cynthia Demos.
Brazill shot Grunow last May 26 — the final day of school — when he took a stolen .25-caliber semiautomatic handgun to campus after being suspended earlier in the day for throwing water balloons.
Prosecutors argued that the teen intentionally shot Grunow, 35, and deserved to be convicted of first-degree murder, which carries a mandatory life sentence. Brazill’s attorneys pushed for a manslaughter conviction, arguing that the then-13-year-old accidentally fired the gun while he was trying to scare Grunow into letting him talk to two girls inside the teacher’s classroom.
The May 16 verdict fell in the middle. Prosecutors say Brazill now faces between 25 years and life in prison under the state’s 10-20-Life law dealing with crimes involving guns, but the teen’s attorneys will argue that the statute doesn’t apply in the teen’s case. If the defense attorneys are successful, Wennet could sentence the teen to less than the 22-year minimum recommended by state sentencing guidelines.
Time and time again during Wednesday’s interview at her home, Powell came back to a single point — her son is a child who did something wrong but deserves a chance at having a life.
She said that when she visited her son a few days after the verdict, he was all right, but they avoided talking about the decision. She said that this Friday, though, she will have “a one-on-one, hard talk about what’s next.”
Powell said jail has been a tough experience for her son — something she blames for his lack of emotion when he testified during his trial. When he first got there, a group of inmates gave him a hard time, and he’s been doing his best to survive ever since, she said.
“When you’re in a lion cage, you have to be a lion,” she said.
Powell said she can’t put her finger on what went wrong — what prompted her son to steal the gun from the family friend’s dresser. She said she has never talked to her son about shooting his teacher.
Powell said that she used to search her son’s room but hadn’t in the months leading up to the shooting because she was struggling with breast cancer.
“I did random searches because I know there are drugs in the area,” she said. “Nowadays any mother would be crazy not to [do searches].”
Two of Grunow’s older brothers have said they would like Brazill to receive a life sentence, saying the teen clearly meant to kill their brother when he cocked the loaded gun and pointed it at the teacher’s head.
“As far as I’m concerned, a life sentence is getting off easy,” said Kurt Grunow, one of Barry Grunow’s brothers, before the verdict. “His mom can go visit him and talk to him in jail. We can’t go visit Barry. We can’t go see Barry.”
But Powell said she knows in her heart that her son told the truth when he testified the shooting was an accident.
And she said she looks forward to the day when she will be reunited with her son. She admits that as positive as she tries to be, she often cries herself to sleep.
“And then in the morning, it’s another day,” she said.
The former honor student, now 33, has been in Florida’s prison system for about two-thirds of his life.
In two years, he’ll be the age Barry Grunow was when Brazill shot him in the face in the doorway of his Lake Worth Middle School classroom near the end of the last day of school.
“We all miss him,” Grunow’s brother Kurt said May 5. “A lot. To this day.”
Palm Beach County hasn’t forgotten Barry Grunow in the 20 years since his death. The gymnasium at Lake Worth Middle has been named for Grunow, a onetime basketball standout. A scholarship fund has distributed a total of nearly $250,000 to hundreds of students in his name.
His son and daughter, now adults, grew up in the area without him. His widow, known for being private, took time over the years to lecture students as a “safe school ambassador.”
“The loved ones we grieve for are still around,” Pam Grunow said at the 2001 dedication of a butterfly garden at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Barry’s alma mater. He loved butterflies.
“We can make good out of bad,” she said, “if we want to.”
Brazill, one of the youngest people charged with murder in Palm Beach County, is set to get out of state prison in eight years, when he’s 41.
He agreed to a Palm Beach Post interview this month but, because of the coronavirus lockdown, was able only to answer questions by email.
“Twenty years ago, I was a 13-year-old kid recognized by law as being too immature and too irresponsible to drive a car, get married, join the military, sign a contract, see a rated ‘R’ movie, or vote,” Brazill wrote from prison. “Today, I am a 33-year-old man, a positive influence among my peers, and a leader within the prison community.”
Pam Grunow, who still lives in Palm Beach County, declined an interview and asked for privacy for her and children, Sam and Lee-Anne, now in their 20s.
She did say in an email about the Barry Grunow Scholarship, “We are happy knowing that so many young people are benefiting,” adding, “this allows Barry’s goals and values to continue through others.”
Barry Grunow was a Detroit-area native whose father died when he was young. He grew up in the working-class Cabana Colony neighborhood near Palm Beach Gardens. At 6-foot-3, with a decent jump shot, he’d earned all-conference basketball honors at Jupiter High.
While he was a freshman at Florida Atlantic University, The Post interviewed him for a 1986 Labor Day weekend story about people’s worst jobs. He’d spent two weeks over the summer as a convenience-store clerk before he’d quit.
“You’re there for eight hours,” he said, “and any minute a killer could come in and gun me between the eyes.”
He finished at FAU In 1987 and was hired to teach English at Loggers’ Run Middle School west of Boca Raton. He already had been dating Pamela Hlawka, a former special-education teacher, for two years, and the two married in 1991. They would have two children and live in a home on North O Street in Lake Worth. It had a basketball net.
In 1995, Barry transferred from the highly rated Loggers’ Run to the struggling Lake Worth Middle. It was more challenging, but he was up to it. And it was just 3 miles from the Grunow home.
One of the kids in his Language Arts class was Nate Brazill.
Grunow had encouraged Brazill when others mocked his zeal for study, which earned him A’s and B’s. He dreamed of becoming a U.S. Secret Service agent.
Brazill lived a little closer to the school than Grunow, about 2½ miles, in an apartment with his mother, Polly Ann Powell, a 2-year-old sister and Powell’s husband. Powell was an assistant food service director at a retirement home. Nathaniel’s father lived in Daytona Beach and sent the family $50 a week.
On the morning of May 26, Polly already was at work when Nathaniel got to the bus stop at 8:30 a.m. He clutched a small bouquet of orange and white blossoms, with a silver balloon, which he would give to a girl he liked just before classes started at 9:15 a.m. Hidden in his backpack: water balloons. It was, after all, the last day of school.
After attending Grunow’s class and having lunch, Brazill went to band, where he played tuba. After class, he slipped into a restroom and filled water balloons. About a dozen students then sparked a fight. They scattered when a counselor ran up. All, that is, but a 13-year-old girl and Nate Brazill.
Busted, they were sent home.
The girl later would say that at the school gate, Brazill told her he planned to come back and shoot the counselor, saying, “Just watch. I’ll be all over the news.”
The previous weekend, he’d visited the Boynton Beach home of a man he considered an unofficial grandfather. The man kept a .25-caliber Raven semiautomatic handgun in a tin box in a drawer, and loose bullets in a separate drawer. Nate had pilfered both.
At his apartment, Brazill retrieved his bicycle, put the gun in his pocket and headed back to school. A campus police officer saw him racing down a fire lane but couldn’t catch up.
Inside, Brazill went looking for the girl to whom he’d given the flowers, as well as her friend. At this time of day, 3:25 p.m., they’d be in Room 301, Barry Grunow’s class.
Security cameras — no audio — capture Grunow meeting Brazill at the door and stepping out into the hallway. Grunow likely did not know he’d been sent home for the day and the rest of the school year.
He likely had asked Brazill for a hall pass. Then he told Brazill he couldn’t see the girls.
An hour later, Brazill would tell investigators that Grunow “was laughing. And that made me mad.”
Brazill pulled out the gun.
“I was like shaking a lot,” he’d say later. “I didn’t know what was going to happen if I would have dropped it. And so it just all went from there.”
Students inside heard Grunow say, “Stop pointing that gun at me, Nate.”
Marc Ariot, a 14-year-old who was in the hall, would say later, “I heard a big pop.”
Grunow dropped in front of a row of lockers. All Brazill could do was curse.
Everybody came running out of class. They were shouting, ‘He shot Mr. Grunow,’ ” Ariot would say. “I saw him laying there in a pool of blood. . . . I knew there was nothing I could do for him.”
John James, a math teacher who’d taught Brazill earlier in the year, stepped out into the hallway. Brazill waved the gun. He said, “Don’t bother me, Mr. James!”
James threw up his palms and backed into his classroom.
Outside, Brazill found his bike gone. He raced across campus, jumped a fence and was running down the street when a police car pulled up. He stopped and walked over. He told the officer, “I shot somebody.”
Polly Ann Powell got home at 3:30 and was surprised to find her son not there. One-half hour later, her sister called. Nathaniel had been arrested.
Twenty minutes later, students at Lake Worth Middle were sent home. Barry Grunow already was dead.
Inside his now-empty classroom, notebooks, purses, and homework had been left behind as frantic students had fled. On Grunow’s desk were a paperweight, a half-finished bag of jelly beans and a worn brown briefcase. On the wall, a sign said, “Welcome to Mr. Grunow’s Class.”
Ben Marlin, then the Palm Beach County schools superintendent, drove to the Grunow home. He said later that Pam kept asking “Why? Why?”
In police video from hours after the shooting, Nathaniel Brazill asked detectives how Grunow was doing. They told him his teacher had died. Brazill broke down and sobbed.
Later, Polly Powell came into the interrogation room and Brazill began to weep and shake. His mother wiped the tears from her boy’s face.
“If I taught you anything,” she said, “didn’t I teach you to think first?”
Barry Grunow’s memorial service would draw about 1,600 people to Good Shepherd United Methodist Church on Military Trail near West Palm Beach.
Many of them were seventh-graders, still at an age where they shouldn’t be expected to tackle a subject as profound as violent death, especially one at their school. But it had been just a year since the mass shooting at Colorado’s Columbine High.
“There’s just been too many of these,” Bob Chase, the president of the National Education Association, told Grunow’s mourners.
Six days after the shooting, a sobbing Polly Powell met with reporters at the Palm Beach County Public Defender’s Office. She said, “I just ask myself, ‘Is it something that I missed?’ ”
How does a 13-year-old do such a thing?
“Because he was 13. That’s what nobody seems to accept,” Robert Udell, who defended Brazill in court, recalled April 28 from Jensen Beach in Martin County.
He called Brazill “one of the finest young men I ever met in 30 years of practice.” But, he said, his client “did a very stupid thing.”
Udell sticks to the argument that Brazill brought the gun to school just to intimidate people, and killed Grunow by accident.
Then-Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer had opted to charge the 13-year-old as an adult.
In the year before he went to trial, Nathaniel Brazill had grown 4 inches and bulked up, morphing from a baby-faced kid to a young man. At trial, prosecutors said he showed little remorse. They said he had admitted pulling back the slide on the gun, which they argued made this no accident.
A conviction of first-degree, premeditated murder meant a life sentence. Manslaughter, the accidental result of recklessly pointing a gun, had a maximum of 15 years. The jury convicted Brazill of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 28 years.
Pam Grunow sued the pawn shop that sold the pistol, as well as Brazill’s “grandfather” and the Palm Beach County School Board. Cases were settled out of court for more than $1 million.
She also sued the Broward County company that made the gun and won a $1.2 million judgment. An appeals court threw it out, saying the gun was anything but defective
The same year Polly Powell’s son killed his teacher, she learned she had breast cancer. In 2003, she would go, with other parents of children who’d committed murder, to the Vatican to try to change U.S. attitudes about prosecuting teenagers as adults.
Cancer took her life in 2008. She was 43.
“It compounded my pain,” Brazill said this month in an email to The Post, “that I was not permitted to bury her which was my duty as her only son and eldest child.
In prison, Brazill has earned his GED and law-clerk and paralegal certifications. He hopes to earn a law degree. He’s filed seven lawsuits and 500 administrative complaints against the prison system. One, filed in July 2011 alleging he was punished for retaliation, was settled.
Prison records show 15 disciplinary actions, most for minor offenses such as lying or disrespect, or violations of telephone or mail privileges, although he was cited for fighting in 2001, for having a weapon in 2005 and for assault in 2015. He admits only to the fighting charge and says the others were fabricated.
Over the years, Brazill has sought clemency and early release without success.
“That wasn’t clear thinking. I personally don’t know what to call it. Stupidity,” he said. “I had no intent to harm Mr. Grunow.”.
He said he was not the person he had been that day. He said, “I am a good person and I will do good.”
Brazill now is at a minimum-security work camp about 60 miles northwest of Tallahassee.
“I refuse to allow what I did, what I didn’t do, or what I should have did, affect what I’m about to do,” he said in mid-May. “I can’t focus on future years if I’m stuck on past years.”
He said he already has petitioned State Sen. Bobby Powell, D-Riviera Beach, to let him attend the funeral of his now 94-year-old maternal grandmother when she dies.
“I have told her,” Brazill said of his grandmother, “that she has to live to be 115 so that she can see me become the first lawyer in our family.”
Powell said May 18 he’s been “amazed” by Brazill’s attitude, and while he acknowledged the tragedy of Grunow’s death, he said, “No one is the worst thing that they have ever done.”
Soon after the shooting, the Barry Grunow Memorial Scholarship was created, seeded by leftover campaign money from then-School Board member Jody Gleason and County Commissioner Warren Newell.
For five years, it drew support from a 3-on-3 basketball tournament at Grunow’s Jupiter High, run by his lifelong friend Garth Rosenkrance and others.
“We just thought it would be a great way to honor him,” he said.
In 2011, MaryAnne Hedrick, who taught physical education at Lake Worth Middle, started a memorial golf tournament. It averaged $15,000 a year. Hedrick, paralyzed in a 1997 car crash, also became an advocate for accessibility. She died last year at just 62, leaving the golf event without an organizer.
“We know that she’s not replaceable,” financial adviser Michael Woods, who helps run the scholarship fund, said April 29. “But we’d like to see somebody come in and continue the legacy.”
In two decades, the fund has distributed $233,250 to 143 public, private and home-schooled students.
Lorraine C. Przybylski of Santaluces High was a first-year recipient. She has taught now for 15 years and is at Rolling Green Elementary in Boynton Beach.
“I’m thankful every day that this is what we do,” Lorraine — now Lorraine Sotelo — said May 5. ’Even though his life ended, he passed on this beautiful thing that continues to give back.”
One day in April of this year, Garth Rosenkrance’s mother texted him a photo she had found in an old album. She was on the sidelines of a flag football game.
Kassi Brandeberry was seventeen years old when she set a house on fire in Ohio killing a fourteen year old teenager and severely injuring another teen, a firefighter was also injured fighting the deadly fire. According to this teen killer lawyers she did not realize that anyone was home when she set the fatal fire however this teen arsonist would be convicted of murder and attempted murder along with a host of other charges. Kassi Brandeberry must serve at least fifteen years in prison before she is eligible for parole.
The Toledo teen who admitted to starting a fire that killed a 14-year-old and injured another teen could spend the rest of her life in prison.
Kassi Brandeberry, was sentenced to 21-years to life in prison on Tuesday in Lucas County Common Pleas Court. She pleaded guilty in April to one count of murder and two counts of aggravated arson for the May 2, 2015 fire that killed Joseph Fazenbaker and seriously injured Michael Rheinbolt.
Fazenbaker, 14, was killed in the fire at 235 Willard in Toledo.
Kassi Brandeberry, who was a 17-year-old at the time of the fire, was sentenced on one count of murder, two counts of aggravated arson, and one count of burglary. Her sentences total 21 years to life in prison. Judge Duhart told the court that the sentences will be served consecutively out of a necessity to protect the public from the danger posed by Brandeberry.
Rheinbolt was severely injured in the fire, causing him to undergo weeks of treatment for kidney failure and other injuries. A Toledo fireman was also injured as a result of the intentionally-set fire. “I want to acknowledge the harm you’ve caused to the fireman that was involved in this act,” Judge Myron Duhart said at Tuesday’s sentencing. “Part of his job is to fight fires and protect the community. (He) didn’t deserve that either. You’ve put just so many people in harms way.”
The teen’s defense attorney addressed the court prior to sentencing, saying Kassi Brandeberry’s rough troubled youth contributed to her poor judgement on the night of the fire. “You could probably teach a PhD course in psychology based on her first 17 years of life,” Brandeberry’s attorney said of her childhood. “She didn’t realize, when she decided to set fire to the house, that there were people inside the house. Her intention was not to take someone’s life.”
“I understand that you have gone through and did go through some dysfunction in your life, but who hasn’t,” Judge Duhart said. “That does not justify those type of actions, Ms. Brandeberry. Where do you get that from?”
“I don’t know,” Kassi Brandeberry replied, through tears.
“Well, you need to know. You need to think about it,” said Judge Duhart. “Everyday that you spend in prison, you need to think about that.”
Judge Duhart also ordered Brandeberry to register as an arson offender upon her release from prison. She must also pay more than $13,000 in restitution to the family’s of her victims, and including $1,089 to the Toledo Fire and Rescue Department for costs of their investigation into the fatal fire.
Rheinbolt said outside the courtroom that he believes the sentence handed down was fair, but did not feel that Brandeberry’s comments in court were genuine. “I feel like, even after Kindergarten, somebody knows the difference between right and wrong.”
Kassi Brandeberry Other News
A Toledo teen has been sentenced for the murder of 14-year-old Joseph Fazenbaker.Kassi Brandeberry was sentenced to 21 years to life Tuesday.
Last month, Brandeberry admitted to setting the fire that killed Joseph and severely burned his step-brother, 13-year-old Michael Rheinbolt. Investigators say she was trying to get back at her boyfriend
“She doesn’t deserve a second chance, Joseph doesn’t get a second chance,” said Agnes Avalos, a family member of the victim.
Family members were allowed to address the teen while in court Tuesday.
“You cannot begin to understand yet at your level of maturity the amount of harm that you have caused,” said Judge Myron Duhart.
Kassi did acknowledge her mistake and apologized to the victim’s families.
“I’m not proud of it, I am ashamed. There is no excuses for this behavior,” said Brandeberry.
Despite her tearful apology, the Honorable Myron Duhart handed her a strict sentence.
“As to count two, you will serve 15 years to life,” said Duhart.
It’s a punishment that will not bring back Joseph, but can help make a family whole again.
“We just want to put this behind us and move on, just put it behind us and go. It’s been so, so painful. So, I hope everyone can pick up and move on from here,” said Ruth Reinbolt, Michael’s mother.
Back in June of 2015, it was decided that Brandeberry would be tried as an adult. She faced life without parole, but took a plea deal in April.
Before Tuesday’s sentencing, both Rheinbolt and Brandeberry spoke. Rheinbolt talked about all he’s lost, including his step-brother. Brandeberry gave her apologies to the family.
Kassi Brandeberry Videos
Kassi Brandeberry Other News
A 17-year-old girl has been indicted as an adult on an aggravated murder charge in a Toledo house fire that killed a 14-year-old boy and seriously injured his 13-year-old stepbrother.
Kassi Brandeberry was indicted on eight counts Tuesday. The most serious charge against her carries a maximum penalty of life in prison without parole.
Prosecutors say there is DNA evidence and surveillance footage linking her to the fire in early May.
A police department spokesman has said that investigators believe the girl had a personal problem with one of the victim’s family members.
Court documents do not list an attorney for Brandeberry. Her defense attorney in juvenile court where she originally appeared denied the charges against her.
Rosco Brackett was a week away from turning seventeen when he fatally shot his stepfather. According to court documents Rosco Brackett and the victim were involved in an argument about school when Rosco grabbed a gun and fatally shot the victim. This teen killer would plead guilty to the murder and would be sentenced to life in prison
Rosco Brackett 2023 Information
Offender Number: 221552
Offender Name: ROSCO DEWAYNE BRACKETT
DOB: Tue, 19 Sep 1995
Height: 6 Feet Inches
Weight: 134
Sex: M
Location: CENTRAL UTAH CORRECTIONAL FACILITY
Housing Facility: CUCF BOULDER
Parole Date: N/A
Aliases:
ROSCO DEWAYNE BRACKETT
R D BRACKETT
Rosco Brackett Other News
A teenager has pleaded guilty to manslaughter and felony discharge of a firearm in the September 2012 shooting death of his stepfather in West Valley City. Rosco Brackett was a week short of his 17th birthday when he killed 52-year-old James George in the home where they lived with the teen’s mother. Brackett is accused of killing George during a fight about school. Family members of the victim testified that the two had a strained relationship.
The{}Salt Lake Tribune reports the 19-year-old Rosco Brackett is scheduled to be sentenced May 15.Prosecutors say the family kept more than 18 firearms in the home, and Brackett went for a gun in the living room when he saw his stepfather turn toward the bedroom, where other guns were stored
Rosco Brackett More News
A 16-year-old West Valley boy was charged as an adult Tuesday with murdering his stepfather.
Rosco Dewayne Brackett, who turns 17 on Wednesday, was charged in 3rd District Court with murder, a first-degree felony; obstructing justice, a second-degree felony; and illegal discharge of a firearm, a third-degree felony.
On Sept. 13, Brackett got into an argument with his stepfather, James Michael George, 52, at their house at 6800 W. 3700 South. Brackett walked away from the argument to get a handgun in the front room and fired a shot at George, missing him, according to the charges.
“(Brackett) then fired another shot which hit George in the head. After George fell to the floor, (Brackett) shot George repeatedly,” the charges state.
Prosecutors say Brackett then hid the handgun and threw away his shirt.
Brackett’s mother, Gina George, immediately called for police and an ambulance after the shooting, said West Valley Police Sgt. Mike Powell.
George died two days later at a hospital.
Brackett was originally booked into juvenile detention but prosecutors decided to charge him as an adult. Bail was set Tuesday at $1 million.
A West Valley City teen who fatally shot his stepfather three years ago was sentenced to the maximum punishment on Friday —a prison term that could keep him behind bars for the rest of his life.
Rosco Dewayne Brackett, now 19, pleaded guilty in January to one count each of second-degree felony manslaughter and first-degree felony discharge of a firearm in the 2012 slaying of James Michael George.
Third District Judge Katie Bernards-Goodman ordered Brackett to serve consecutive terms of one to 15 years on the manslaughter count and a term of five years to life on the firearms charge — a punishment she said she would order in spite of Brackett’s expressions of regret and the progress he has made in jail over the past three years.
“I have no doubt that you are a different person now, and that sober, you would not have done what you did,” the judge said.
Brackett, who goes by his initials J.D., had appealed to Bernards-Goodman to give him a chance at a better, more productive life, telling the judge about his success earning a GED, completing substance abuse programs and working while in jail. He also said he was deeply sorry for his actions, noting that he stills considers his stepfather’s family his own, and prays for them daily.
“There are not enough years in my life to give back what I have taken from this family,” said Brackett. “I reacted poorly, I am haunted by this each and every day.”
Brackett was initially charged with first-degree felony murder, along with felony discharge of a firearm and obstructing justice for allegedly hiding a gun and getting rid of the shirt he was wearing during the alleged shooting.
Brackett was a week short of his 17th birthday when he killed George during a Sept. 13, 2012 argument at the family’s home, near 3700 South and 6800 West, about school and the teen’s efforts to get his GED.
In court papers, prosecutors say when George, 52, walked away from the argument, Brackett got a gun from another room and shot at his stepfather, but missed. The teen then shot George in the head and several more times after he fell to the floor, the documents say. George died the next day.
On Friday, George’ family, including a son and a sister, told Bernards-Goodman they were devastated by seeing George lifeless in a hospital bed before his death and begged the judge for the maximum sentence.
Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney Blake Hills echoed the family’s request and said the defense team’s suggested sentence of additional jail time and treatment programs followed by probation was insufficient.
“This isn’t a drug case,” Hills said. “It’s a murder.”
Although she didn’t speak Friday, Brackett’s mother had written the judge, praising her son’s progress and saying she believed that given a chance, he could lead a productive life and be a role model for others.
“I do know he has to be punished for what he did,” the letter states. “I just hope and pray you can see the good him and give him a chance to become someone, instead of someone who comes in and out of the system because that is all they know.”
Brackett, who was charged in adult court, initially denied any role in the fatal shooting, but had said he believed his stepfather was leaving the room to get a gun, so he had fired a warning shot.
During an evidence hearing in 2103, family members said the two men had a “strained” relationship, and Gina George said her controlling and demanding husband considered her son “baggage.”
Rosco Brackett is currently incarcerated at the Central Utah Correctional Center
Rosco Brackett Release Date
Rosco Brackett was sentenced to life and must serve twenty years before he is eligible for parole
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