America’s war: the killing of Jaiden Dixon and Tyler Dunn

Brandon (not his real name) lived about a mile away, on a dirt road off Tylers. Brandon, who was 12, would sometimes pick up Tyler on his go-kart, and they would roam the neighbourhood. They had been friends since kindergarten, but werent inseparable. Once, Lora told Tyler he could no longer play with Brandon after Brandon abandoned him in town and went off with another friend.

Brandon was living with his father Jerry, who owned a trucking company. Jerry often took his son hunting and occasionally trucking, too. If Tyler was over, Jerry would take them both. Jerrys truck runs, ferrying milk and topsoil around the midwest, usually took him away for 11 hours at a time. Hed give the boys some money to help him out. Sometimes Jerry would have them sit up front; at other times, theyd be in the back playing video games. Tyler loved it.

On Thursday 21 November, Jerry had taken the boys hunting. Tyler had slept over on Friday night, and on Saturday afternoon the boys were scheduled to accompany Jerry in the truck down to Springfield, Ohio, 260 miles south and back. Lora dropped Tylers bike off at the house around 2pm, but the boys never used it because it was too cold: 8C, with winds of over 25 miles an hour.

Shortly before Jerry was about to leave, the boys said they wanted to stay home. He left them to it. He made this trip as often as three times a week, and Brandon took care of himself fine. Lora didnt know that by the time she dropped the bike off, Jerry was already gone. Tyler knew he wasnt allowed there unless there was supervision, she says. But he didnt call, and nor did Jerry. Lora went out with Thomas to celebrate a girlfriends birthday 90 minutes away in Union Lake. Jerry checked in with the boys a few times. The last time Brandon called Jerry was around 6.30pm, to ask if he could order pizza.

Almost two hours later, Brandon walked out of the house with his hands up, wearing red shorts with no shirt or socks, the police telling him to keep his hands where they could see them. He had just called 911 and told them he had shot Tyler.

Do you have any weapons? the policeman yelled.

No, Brandon said. Its on the kitchen floor.

A policeman walked Brandon to his car as he pleaded: It was an accident. I didnt know the gun was loaded.

An officer went inside, where he found a lever-action rifle on the kitchen floor and Tyler on the dining-room floor, in a Mountain Dew T-shirt and sweatpants, with a large pool of blood surrounding his head. There was a huge wound on the left side of his head. The policeman found no pulse, called dispatch, and told them Tyler was dead. As he left, he saw a shotgun lying on the living room couch and four holes in the dining-room window.

Nobody but Brandon will ever know for sure what happened that night, Sheriff Biniecki says. Brandon claims they were playing Xbox when he got a rifle out of Jerrys closet to show Tyler. He asked Tyler to hold it while he went to get his milkshake from the bedroom. He came back and took the rifle from Tyler, who passed it to him butt first, the muzzle pointing in Tylers direction. Brandon was resting it against the wall when the gun got caught on his pocket and went off.

Brandon sat in the car while police combed the house. Hed been crying and was visibly shaken. When they searched him, they found two 12-gauge Remington buckshot shells and a mobile phone. There was blood on his hands and on the phone. When asked how hed come by the shells, Brandon said hed found them earlier that day and stuck them in his pocket for safekeeping.

Inside the property, the police found a veritable arsenal. In Brandons room was a Remington 1100 shotgun, loaded and perched against the dresser with one round in the chamber and four in reserve. There were two more single-shot shotguns near the closet. In the top dresser drawer, there was some marijuana in tin foil and two rolled joints. When asked later how many guns he had in the house, Jerry couldnt remember. First he said seven or eight, then between five and 10.

Brandon didnt know Tylers address, but he could describe his house. The police went there to find only his sisters at home, who told them to call their grandmother. Janet came shortly after midnight and was told the news. She called Lora. There was no reply: shed left her phone in the car to charge. When she came out, she saw several missed calls and dialled Janet.

Are you on your way home? her mother asked.

No why? Lora replied.

I think you need to come home.

She wouldnt explain why, but that didnt unduly concern Lora. She assumed her daughters had thrown a party and got caught.

Night falls heavy in Sanilac County, cloaking the land in uncluttered darkness. On dirt roads with no street lamps for miles, the flashing lights of stationary police vehicles announce themselves with the force of a lighthouse. On the way to her mothers house, Lora saw the lights on Brandons road and drove towards them.

She called her mother. Mom, do you have Tyler?

I think youd better just come here, Janet said.

And then she put the police officer on the phone, Lora recalls.

Dont go there. Just come here, she told her, and Lora obliged.

Theres been an accident, the policewoman said when she got to the house.

OK, Lora said.

Your sons in Lapeer county hospital.

OK, Lora said. Why didnt you tell me, because I just came through Lapeer?

No, Lora, the policewoman said. Hes been shot and killed.

While Lora was halfway home, Jerry was at the sheriffs office in Sandusky. It was 2am. He had been called and asked to pick Brandon up. The police asked him whether there were any custody issues between him and Brandons mother, Connie, and whether he often left his son alone. Asked if any of his weapons were loaded, he said they might have been. Finally, they asked if Brandon had taken hunter safety classes. Jerry said he was doing the apprenticeship programme, in which a child aged 10 or more can hunt for two years without a safety certificate if with an adult. Beyond that, he had given basic instructions. I told him to hold the gun with the barrel pointing in the air. Never to point the gun at anyone, and never put any shells in the gun unless you are outside.

How the gun got into Brandons bedroom was a mystery to Jerry. He thought it had originally been in the living room and didnt remember moving it. All the guns were his, apart from the 20-gauge, which hed bought Brandon. He said the .30-30 rifle that killed Tyler had been in his closet the whole time; hed put three rounds in it a year earlier and not touched it since. It was only then that Jerry was told why Brandon was there.

Had Brandon not shot Tyler, a handful of minor episodes relating to his behaviour would probably never have amounted to anything. But he did, and over the next few days police interviews provided hints that, even if this was not an expected turn of events, it was always a possibility.

In her police interview, Connie said she had always been nervous about the number of guns Jerry had in the house, and assumed they were loaded. And then there were the incidents at school: the day before hunting season began, Brandon had boasted that he had pointed a 20-gauge at a boys stomach while it was loaded without the safety on. He also joked that the boy should put antlers on his head and run around so Brandon could shoot him. The child who overheard them thought they were goofing around about the antlers; he also thought they were serious about aiming at the boys stomach.

Guns were more available in Brandon and Tylers world than for any of the days other victims. In much of rural America, guns are an everyday part of life, for recreational and practical reasons. Being a rural community, we have problems with everything from skunks to critters, Sheriff Biniecki explains. Its not uncommon for a farmer to have a firearm handy.

With so many guns around, the potential for calamity is ever present. A few weeks earlier, two local men said they were shot at by a duck hunter. Five days after Tyler was shot, a 16-year-old shot himself in the foot while hunting 20 minutes away. Although Biniecki treats each gun death as its own discrete tragedy, one nonetheless detects in his voice a weary familiarity with cases such as Tylers. The key to preventing accidents, he says, is education and parental responsibility. I think we need to use the opportunity to further educate parents that if you do have a gun, unload it and put it away. Teach your kids the safety rules. And then, over time, dont get lax with it, because children are always curious. Put those two things together and bad things can happen.

In January 2013, in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings, Barack Obama started a second term that became increasingly strident in its advocacy for gun control. He sought to shift the climate of caution by issuing a presidential memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.