Family of former Meeniyan resident devastated by break-in murder in USA
Matt Dunn
THE family of former Meeniyan resident Brenton Estorffe has been “devastated” by his murder in the United States of America, a day after his 29th birthday.
Locally, Brenton has family in Leongatha, Meeniyan and Inverloch.
Leongatha’s Vivienne Renden, Brenton’s maternal aunt, said the family was picking up the pieces in the wake of last week’s shocking crime at Fort Bend County, Houston.
Brenton’s mother, Denise, was in almost constant contact with her son and grandchildren – making FaceTime calls up to three times a day.
“It was Brenton’s birthday on the Tuesday. It was about 12pm in Queensland and about 10pm in Texas when Denise and Brenton were Facetiming. Brenton’s three year old, Asher, was still playing around, making jokes,” Vivienne said.
“Within a couple of hours, Brenton’s wife Angeleanna Facetimed Denise, saying ‘Brenton’s been shot.’”
It was a short call, with Angeleanna apologising that she had to go, as the police were there at the home.
“That was all Denise got to start with,” Vivienne said.
The full horror of the situation was soon made clear, with a subsequent call from Angeleanna confirming every mother’s worst nightmare – the sudden death of a child.
“Denise said to me, ‘This cannot be real.’ She hadn’t accepted at that point. Her and Mick (Denise’s husband and Brenton’s father) are obviously devastated,” Vivienne said.
“They seemed OK, yesterday, but they’ve been very supportive of one another. They’ve got a lot of support in the US. Mick and Denise lived there for about 18 months themselves in that particular suburb.
“Brenton moved to that suburb six months ago because they thought it was a safer place to live.”
Brenton was killed as wife Angeleanna and the couple’s two young children Asher and Eliana slept.
He heard the window at the backdoor being smashed and jumped out of bed investigate. Two intruders were in the home, with one shooting the protective father and husband.
A neighbour tried to resuscitate Brenton, but he could not be saved.
Brenton, who grew up playing football and basketball locally, moved to the US in 2011 to follow his dream of playing professional basketball.
A lack of height counted against him and he shifted his focus to American football, where he played as a punter at college.
Vivienne remembered her nephew as a “cheeky” boy. She is hopeful that police in America will soon make an arrest, with a team of a dozen detectives working around the clock on the case.
Police believe that in addition to the two intruders, a third may have driven a getaway car.
Two separate ‘Go Fund Me’ pages have been set up help the family with the costs of Brenton’s funeral.
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Posted by Tayla Kershaw on Oct 22 2019. Filed under Featured, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
