The deepest pain...

Where to even begin? I think maybe from the beginning. I was nineteen when I found out I was pregnant with my first child, after only being in a relationship for two months and yes I was unmarried. I was so excited I just knew it would be a boy and I was so in love with his father.. After all I had waited for almost a year for him to come back to me after we had met the first time. Then reality sit in as I told the guy that I was pregnant. His first response was "you need to get an abortion". I was stunned to say the least, I thought he really loved me but I was very wrong. My first real broken heart and hard life lesson. I told him I didn't need him and would raise my child without him. I had full support from my family. The father and I played at being a couple for about eight months, until I caught him with another girl he had been seeing the whole time we were together. I let him go and decided to focus on me and my child but I ask him to come to the hospital when our son was born. I still wanted him to be a part of my life, I thought once he seen me having our child and then holding his son it would change his mind. I was wrong. So at twenty years old I became a scared single mom but a very happy one. I loved my son Brandon with all of my heart and soul. He weighed 9lbs.8oz and was 22 inches long a huge boy, with a head full of black hair(see picture). I didn't know that I could love someone so much, I felt like my heart would explode with love. I had a hard fourteen hour labor and both of us about died, I felt very blessed to have him to love. When I looked in his face for the first time I knew no matter what else came with being a mother it would all be worth it for this precious child. I come from a large Southern family and was used to helping take care of kids so that was nothing new to me or so I thought but when you are fully responsible for them it is completely different. There are a lot of things that I could talk about going on in my life at this time but I want this story to be about my son and not so much me. Brandon was growing by leaps and bounds crawling at six months, walking at nine months, reading at a year old. He was so smart and always on the move like he had some where to be and things to do. He learned really fast and was so bright with life and just a little spoiled. When he started pre-school he exceled in learning but we started to realize he had an issue. I was getting notes from his teachers that he couldn't or wouldn't sit still for very long in class and was disruptive. I knew that he loved life and was full of energy but not mean or disrespectful. Brandon loved to explore and to learn and see how life and everything around him worked. It is hard for children to just sit in class all day and not get up and move around they are not adults. By the time Kindergarten came I knew Brandon was different and that it may not be an easy time in school. His IQ was very high and he was easily bored, so his notes from the teachers always said he could not sit still and was disrupting the class. They always said he is a good child but he just can't sit still. By first grade I found out that he had ADHD(Attention Deficit Hyper Activity Disorder. (WOW) I had never heard of this and was blown away. so then came the Doctor visits and the medicines and the never ending search for answers. " I told my mom one time that she had left me out in left field with know instructions". I was so lost and felt like such a failure as a mom. Brandon was so loving and so intelligent, he just could not contain all of that life inside of him. He loved people and had lots of friends, his teachers loved him, he loved animals, he loved sports, he loved video games, cars, anything fast moving. It always seemed he knew he only had a limited amount of time and wanted to live as much as possible. We made it through school, I say we because I was there a lot. Brandon consumed much of my life and time. His sister who is five years his junior grew up in his shadow. Don't get me wrong she was very and is very much loved but Brandon took the for front. He was a momma's boy from day one. When Brandon turned eighteen he joined the Army, He did eight years , with three combat tours. Two were in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, he was Honorably discharged as a Specialist but had actually made Sergeant. He has lots of medals but didn't like to talk about them, he said he went to fight for our freedom and not to be a hero. I knew the boy that left to go to battle would come back a different man but he was still so full of life and always had so many friends that I cound'nt keep up with all of them. His love life not so good He married the first time when he was nineteen and she was seventeen, him going to war was not good on a young wife. So that one didn't last long. It is hard to be married with an Ocean and dessert between you. The second time he was twenty one and she was nineteen, he was still in the Army and that is hard on a relationship. He was deployed again and this one suffered from him being gone. His first son from his first wife was born while he was in Iraq the first time. He was home for the birth of his second son from his second wife but deployed to Afghanistan for the birth of his first daughter. After he retired from the Army and came home for good, he had several girlfriends but could never seem to find the one he was looking for. He met and married a third wife , they had only been married a year and it fell apart. I will not try to speculate on any of his relationships because I did not live them. but all of his ex girlfriends and ex wives still talked to him almost daily. In October of 2019 my son met a woman that was older than him by about eight years and I thought maybe this would be good for him to try someone older more so than someone younger as the other three had been. There had been conflicts with all of his ex's regarding custody, child support and all of the natural mess that comes with an ended relationship. I used to remind him that he had chosen them and had loved them at one point and that it took two to make an argument. so after his third marriage ended.( not divorced just separated) I started giving his girlfriends numbers. We were at six in seven months, when he met this older woman. Everything seemed just like all of the others great at first , so in love, happiest he had ever been, so hopeful that she was the one. but just like that he started telling me her teenage daughter hated him and wanted her mom and dad back together and that he was in the way of that because her parents had only been separated a few months. I told him that maybe he needed to give her some time to straighten out her life and to go slower. They were back and forth so much that we didn't know from one hour to the next if they were together or mad. This was turning into a nightmare for me as his mother. He already had two ex wives and separated from a third. with four children in the mix. His third wife had his second daughter December the 11th, he never got to meet her. Thanksgiving day in 2019 this woman and Brandon were on thier way to my house and were play fighting in the car something they and he had always done. he liked to wrestle and play. She was so mad when they got hear and I ask why? She said he really hit me in the car as we were play fighting. Brandon said that he had hit a pot hole at the same time as he went to hit her back from her slapping him and it made him slap her harder than intended. I jumped on both of them for play fighting at all especially while driving with kids in the car. She said to me no man would hit her playing or not and get away with it. I told them they both needed to grow up. I realized then that this one was not going to work and I also knew she would not let it go. I was right she brought it up to him constantly with many witnesses to hear about it and her anger kept growing no matter how much he apologized for the incident. Their relationship started down hill from there. Brandon had been at her house from Friday the 13th of December until Wednesday morning of the 18th and then he had gone to West VA to bring back equipment for his work. He came by my house around 8 or 8:30 that night after he came back from West VA. As soon as he came in the door I said I guess you will be going on to so and so's, I never get to see you anymore. Brandon said no she told me to just stay the night with you because she was going to a Christmas party with her friends and didn't know what time she would be home. I said oh really? so things are not so good after all and he said I never know from one minute until the next. We talked about there relationship and about what he really wanted or needed. I told him it would be nice if he stayed because he was always down there with her and I never seen him much . He lived next door to me before her and I was used to seeing him every day. Brandon said ok and laid down on my couch to go to sleep, he had only been laying there maybe a half an hour when he got a text. He sat up answered his text put his boots back on and said mom I think I will just go get my stuff and the kids Christmas presents, she want be home any way and I will come back. I told him I thought that was best and to let me me know if he decided to stay so I wouldn't worry. Brandon text me at 10:50 and said he just decided to stay and I text back and said lol I figured you would because I thought everything was fine. I went to bed around midnight never knowing that at 11:50 she had shot my son in the back and that he had died instantly. I slept through the night never knowing that my son was dead. No one called me or came to tell me. NO one. My nephew woke me up around 8:30am and ask if I had heard from Brandon that he hadn't called him or shown up so they could go to work. I called Brandon's phone and got voice mail and then remembered he did not always get good service at her house and so I text him and ask him to call me ASAP, which usually he did within fifteen or twenty minutes and nothing. I called her house and no answer, I called her cell and no answer which was unusual because she would be up getting her children ready for school. So my nephew went back next door and told me to let him know what Brandon said when he called. Around 9:25 my niece called me and was asking me if I was ok, I thought she sounded funny but my daughter beeped in and I hung up to answer her call. My daughter said first thing have you heard from Brandon and I told her what I had just done with the calls and messages. Amanda said mom you need to sit down and I knew it was going to be bad. She said that her cousin had called and said that she herd Brandon had got into a fight last night and that he got shot and didn't make it. As soon as she said those words I knew my son was dead. I did not have details but I knew it was true. I found out from Rumors that my son was dead not by police. It was all over FB and his friends were trying to find him. Nothing. No answer, no communication, nothing. No police report of a shouting, just rumor's. no hospital had anything, no police had anything. just no one had heard from my son since he had text me the night before. Very unlike my son he was always on the phone or FB and always talking to somebody. All day long I was just in shock screaming noooooooooooooooooooooooo. My son's second wife heard about it and called me and she got me the name of the person who first told about it and his number. My nephew called him and that's when he told us that the woman Brandon was dating and staying with shot him in the head and killed him because they were fighting. My daughter filed a missing person's report and the deputy came to talk to me around 3:00pm that Thursday the 19th. The deputy told me when he came that no shouting of any kind had been reported within a hundred miles, so he said maybe something else was wrong. As we were talking and filing the report, dispatch told him to call HQ and when he came back in I knew they had found him and that he was dead. For some unknown reason the police of that county did not put it over the radio as was normal so that's why no officials knew about it. Even the VSP did not report anything over the radio and they helped to investigate the scene. The deputy told me then that was unusual and that he was sorry but that the woman had shot my son and killed him. We called that police station and was told that yes my son was dead and that's all they would tell me. Saturday the 21st of December after the funeral home picked up my son from the coroner's office they called me and told me that he had been shot in the back and not in the head. Still no return call from the police in charge of the case, he was busy and could not call me back to give me details about my son's murder. I was still in shock and only had rumors and half truths to go on. We did a TV spot on the news and a news paper did two stories but still no real answers. I was informed to go and get a copy of the police report because it was public record and so I did. I have a copy of the original police report from that night and a lot of things don't add up. We have spoken with the CA for that county and he said he has enough evidence to charge her with 2nd degree murder but that the case is still on going. She shot him in the back as he was walking away from their fight and she said he hit her in the face. Even if that is true he was walking away and she shot him in the back. That is not self defense, that is murder. Because it is an on going case I can not print all of the details that we privately know but I just want the truth to come out and my son to have some one to speak for him because all we have heard in the news stories is her side. My son is dead and can't tell his side. So who will help tell his story, so far no one has. Not only did I lose my only son at 34 years old but he was murdered and she has not even been processed, charged, taking to jail, gone to trial, or any of the normal procedures. I just don't understand, I thought we had laws for a reason and that they applied to everyone. I want justice for my son, this has been a living hell for over a year now with no answers. Thank you for taking the time to read my story, I pray that no one else ever goes through what I have. Betty Henley Bishop