Published: May 02, 2008 01:37 am      

DPS shooting suspect takes his own life

East Texas man had ties to Anderson County

A 37-year-old East Texas man who apparently took his own life Thursday after gunning down a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper two days earlier lived in Frankston during his teenage years, according to local authorities.

Authorities said Brandon Wayne Robertson, 37, of Tyler died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound sometime around 5 p.m. Thursday near Linden in Cass County as law enforcement officers, who had been searching for him almost 48 hours, closed in on his location.

Robertson was the capital murder suspect in the Tuesday night killing of DPS Trooper James Scott Burns, 39, on a farm-to-market road near Lake O’ The Pines, approximately 35 miles northeast of Longview.

Burns was shot multiple times before he could even get out of his squad car following a pursuit, authorities have said.

Robertson, a former peace officer, worked for several East Texas law enforcement agencies over a seven-year span before running afoul of the law himself. He worked for the Overton and Kilgore police departments and the Rusk County Sheriff’s Office before leaving law enforcement around 1999.

Tommy Barr, a captain with the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office, served as police chief in Frankston from 1982 through 2002 and remembered Robertson and his brother during his tenure there.

Barr said Robertson lived in Frankston for “five or six years,” finishing high school around 1989.

“I know Brandon had some problems after he went through the police academy,” Barr said Thursday afternoon before Robertson apparently committed suicide. “You don’t want to think bad about people...I guess you could say it kind of shocked me (to learn Robertson had allegedly killed a peace officer).”

The captain said he did not learn that Robertson was believed to be the man responsible for the trooper’s death until Wednesday morning. He knew right away who the suspect was.

“Brandon Wayne Robertson,” said Barr, recounting when he heard the suspect’s name in a media report. “Not too many of them floating around.”

Still, Barr said he did not remember Robertson to be a troublemaker during his younger days.

“I never had any problem out of the boys,” Barr said.

Barr said the suspect’s father, Daryl Robertson, was a reserve officer for the Frankston Police Department for “better than a year” in the late 1980s before taking a job with the Kilgore Police Department.

During his time as a reserve officer in Frankston, Daryl Robertson also worked as a correctional officer at the TDCJ’s Michael Unit in Tennessee Colony, according to Barr.

Records indicate Brandon Robertson had been in and out of legal trouble over the past three years.

In 2006, Brandon Robertson was convicted of the third-degree felony offense of possession of a controlled substance and sentenced to four years in the TDCJ, according to prison spokesperson Michelle Lyons.

The offense was committed in Gregg County on or about Aug. 26, 2004, but Lyons said her agency did not have any records regarding the specifics of the crime.

Lyons said Brandon Robertson was “received” into the TDCJ system on Oct. 20, 2006 and spent six months in prison before being released on parole on April 26, 2007.

Brandon Robertson was credited for approximately three months for time served in county jail in relation to the same sentence, meaning he spent a total of approximately nine months incarcerated for the offense.

“He (Brandon Robertson) was reporting to the Tyler district parole office,” Lyons said.

Also, a web site listing judicial records in Gregg County indicates that Robertson was found guilty of the misdemeanor offenses of theft between $50 and $500 and unlawfully carrying a weapon, with both occurring during 2005.

More recently, within the past month, Robertson was charged with possession of a controlled substance by DPS troopers on April 6 in Cherokee County. He was released from the Cherokee County Jail in Rusk the following day after posting a $7,500 bond.

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Paul Stone may be contacted via e-mail at pstone@palestineherald.com