Child’s Play: The Shocking Murder of Brandon O’Quinn Raspberry

A Startling Confession

On April 12, 2024, worried officials from the Nixon-Smiley Consolidated School District contacted law enforcement agents to say that one of their students, a ten-year-old boy, had confessed to killing a man in 2022. While they had found the outlandish claim hard to believe, something about the child’s unbothered demeanor convinced them that his story needed looking into.

When deputies from the Gonzales County Sheriff’s Office arrived to investigate the complaint, they learned that the boy had threatened to physically assault and kill another student on the school bus the day before. When confronted with the allegations, he had freely admitted to making the threats.

Rather than stopping there and taking his lumps, the child had volunteered a shocking bit of information that brought the room to a standstill. In a voice devoid of emotion, he confessed that he had shot and killed a man two years prior, one week before his eighth birthday.

After being brought up to speed, deputies asked the boy to share what he remembered about that day, if anything. To nearly everyone’s surprise, he had total recall of his actions on the afternoon of January 18, 2022.