Man’s last hours detailed

BROOKSVILLE –
Law enforcement paid more than one visit to Brenda Edwards-Jackson.

During the last 12 hours of Kenardo Frazer’s life, they kept getting calls and kept knocking on her door.

Frazer would run off before deputies arrived.

They showed up about three times the morning of March 31, 2011, at a house off Anderson Road in Damac Estates. The first time was shortly after midnight. Neighbors were growing more and more irritated at the shouting.

Edwards-Jackson’s daughter’s boyfriend, Dunell Brown, didn’t like what he was hearing either. He was staying at the house that morning.

Moments after the clock struck noon that same day, Frazer was shot twice in the chest and fell face first into a mud puddle along Howell Avenue.

Deputies responded to Damac again, only this time Frazer didn’t merely flee the scene. He had been running for his life — and he didn’t make it out of the neighborhood.

The Hernando County Sheriff’s Office, according to court records, interviewed Edwards-Jackson at length.

Edwards-Jackson, a Central High School teacher who specializes in special-needs students, said she had been arguing with Frazer, her boyfriend, in her front yard that morning. She said she had tried many times to break up with him. At one point, Frazer grabbed the keys to the rental car she had parked in her driveway.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” one witness heard Frazer say during one of the couple’s fights that morning.

Edwards-Jackson, who gave several conflicting statements to detectives, said she went after him as he walked away, according to the sheriff’s office. She pulled on his jacket and broke some of her fingernails, she said. By the time she returned home, she said, Frazer left her a series of vulgar and hostile messages.

After hearing Frazer’s alleged threats, she called law enforcement. She also asked a relative to park her vehicle in front of the rental car. She didn’t want Frazer to steal it.

Several people told detectives Frazer had placed drugs inside the car and was determined to get them back.

Brown, son of the late Jerome Brown, an NFL standout during the late 1980s and early 1990s, had lost all of his patience by midmorning, deputies said.

After an allegedly blade-wielding Frazer showed up at the house for the last time, Dunell Brown confronted him, told him to drop the knife and fight him “straight up,” according to sheriff’s reports.

Brown told detectives that Frazer refused to ditch the knife.

Brown, Charles Bottom Jr. and Julius Holder pleaded guilty in Frazer’s killing April 19 in Hernando County Circuit Court.

Brown, the ringleader, and Holder, the driver and shooter, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. Bottom, who was along for the ride, pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

Brown and Bottom will be sentenced in June, and Holder will be sentenced in July.

None of the three men wandered far after the shooting. They were rounded up that night in different places around Brooksville.

“This case was the first violent homicide of my administration and began as an unidentified victim in a citizen’s front yard,” said Sheriff Al Nienhuis. “From the start, the victim was quickly identified by forensics, and crime analysis uncovered his associates.”

Nienhuis said detectives arrested the first suspect, Holder, within seven hours after he and his accomplices were linked to the homicide.

“This was the first real test of the agency’s capabilities I was able to witness firsthand,” Nienhuis said. “I must admit, I was impressed.”

The dominoes fell after Holder admitted to shooting Frazer.

Holder’s attorney’s motion to suppress those statements was overruled by a judge during an April 18 court hearing. All three men stood before the same judge the next day and entered their guilty pleas.

Brown called Holder and told him to come to the house, according to reports.

“This (expletive) got a knife,” Brown told Holder over the phone. “Bring the fire.”

Holder, who brought Bottom with him, showed up and faced off with Frazer, who allegedly was still clinging to the knife.

“Alright,” he told Frazer. “I got something for that.”

He drove back to his house, grabbed a loaded 9mm handgun and returned.

By the time Holder pulled up, Frazer bolted.

“This (expletive) wants to run?” Brown said. “Why is he running now?”

The three got into Holder’s car and went after Frazer.

During her interview with a detective later that day, Edwards-Jackson said Brown called her after the shooting and told her, “Miss Brenda, you don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

Betty Selbe caught a glimpse of someone darting across her yard.

She looked out the window and saw a man in a black jacket running toward Howell Avenue.

She stood up and saw a gold sedan in her driveway. The two passengers got out. One looked between the houses and the other looked eastward toward Selbe’s backyard.

They spotted the person they were looking for and got back inside the sedan. It peeled out, but the driver didn’t travel far before parking it again. Selbe moved over to her rear window and saw the same group of men standing along the fence line of her neighbor’s property.

She heard two gunshots and moved away from the window. She called 911.

Robert Alex Csorba of 1583 Howell Ave. caught a glimpse of Frazer sprinting across his front yard moments after Selbe spotted him.

Csorba opened the door and let out his dogs. Two gunshots rang out and the dogs stopped in their tracks.

Frazer, who had jumped a fence, struggled back onto Csorba’s property. He dropped the cell phone he was holding in his left hand and collapsed.

Another neighbor said he saw the suspects running back to their car after the shots were fired. One of them was laughing.

At least two witnesses told authorities they recognized Bottom as being in the car with Holder and Brown, according to court documents.

Moments after Frazer was shot, Bottom uttered, “That (expletive) is dead.”

Bottom spoke to his girlfriend over the phone April 6 while in jail. He insisted he had nothing to do with the shooting.

After further prodding, Bottom divulged one incriminating detail.

“You want to know the truth?” he asked the woman on the other line. “I was in the car.”

Based on interview transcripts, Brown said he was harboring murderous thoughts throughout the morning as Frazer and Edwards-Jackson continued arguing.

About 1 a.m., he called Holder. Brown was fed up with the yelling. He told his friend to come over and bring a gun. At that point, Holder said he didn’t have one on him. He called another friend, but couldn’t get hold of him.

The detective who interviewed Brown asked, “You were ready to smoke (Frazer) that night?”

“Yeah, but thank God nobody had a gun,” Brown answered.

The suspect wasn’t as forthright at the start of the interview. He denied having anything to do with the shooting.

The detective told him the amount of cash Frazer was carrying when he was killed.

“If I knew he had all that (expletive) money, I would have took it,” Brown said.

He paused for a second or two.

“If I was there.”