Death of Brandon Lawson

Brandon Mason Lawson lived in San Angelo, Texas, with his girlfriend of ten years, Ladessa Lofton. On August 8, 2013, Lawson returned home after not having come back the night before, and between roughly 10:45 and 11:00 p.m. he and Lofton argued; Lofton believed Lawson was on drugs at the time. Lawson had ongoing issues with substance abuse but had reportedly been clean for about six months, though his brother, Kyle Lawson, later said Brandon had taken methamphetamine shortly before he disappeared. Around 11:30 p.m., Lawson called his father, who lived in Crowley, Texas, about a three-hour drive away, and told him he was coming to his house. At 11:54 p.m., Lawson left home in his silver Ford F-150, heading for his father's house.

At about 12:30 a.m. on August 9, Lawson called his brother Kyle and said he had run out of gas and was pulled over on U.S. Route 277 between San Angelo and Bronte. Kyle later said that during the call Lawson told him, "Three (expletives) are chasing me out of town," which he took to mean "the Mexicans in the neighborhood," and that when he asked whether Lawson was hallucinating, Lawson denied it. Kyle, along with his wife and four-year-old child, drove to Lofton's house for a fuel container and continued exchanging calls with Lawson, who would end each conversation after only a few sentences. At 12:50 a.m., Lawson called 9-1-1; the call was routed to a nursing home in Robert Lee, Texas, where he told the responder he had run out of gas and needed police, making several confused, incoherent statements, including that he was "in the middle of a field" and that "the guy's chasing (inaudible) to the woods." At 12:56 a.m., a passing trucker separately called 9-1-1 to report Lawson's truck parked in a hazardous manner on the roadway.

Between 12:50 and 1:15 a.m., Lawson exchanged calls with his brother, girlfriend, a neighbor, and the 9-1-1 dispatcher, though poor cell reception sent several calls straight to voicemail; after 1:19 a.m., all calls to his phone went to voicemail without connecting. Around 1:18 a.m., Kyle called Lawson, who sounded out of breath and said he was bleeding. Shortly after 1 a.m., a sheriff's deputy reached Lawson's truck, but Lawson was not there; Kyle arrived around 1:10 a.m. and, while on the phone with Lawson, was told, "I can see you; I'm right here," though neither he nor the deputy could see Lawson nearby. Lawson had an active arrest warrant at the time, and Kyle suspected he might be hiding from the deputy. Kyle left a fuel container in the truck bed, waited nearby for 30 to 45 minutes, then left and returned around 5 a.m. to find Lawson still had not reappeared. The truck was towed around 8 a.m.

A local deputy organized a search party that spent several hours examining the area near the truck but found no trace of Lawson. Friends and family created a Facebook page, "Help Find Brandon Lawson," which had grown to more than 29,000 followers by 2025. On February 4, 2022, Lawson's family reported that a search party had found clothing identified as his near his last known location, after which the Texas Rangers searched the area and recovered human remains. On December 25, 2024, Lofton posted that DNA testing had returned a positive result confirming the remains were Lawson's; the exact cause of his death remains unknown.