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Fun-time party took fatal turn
Description of the events at the fatal party
Date published: 1/25/2006 By BILL FREEHLING By TODD JACOBSON When Baron Braswell Sr. pulled up to the Howard Johnson motel in Spotsylvania County, he found a spot right in front of the entrance. His son was in the passenger's seat, dressed in a Tiki Barber New York Giants jersey. Baron Braswell II was excited about the party; he'd just finished a week of midterms. But his father held him in the car for a bit, wanting to scope out security. He noticed that guards were patting down people, checking them for weapons. "I saw about four kids go in," Braswell Sr. recalled yesterday. "I said, 'You can go.' I said, 'I'll see you later.'" As the 16-year-old boy got out of his dad's car, Kendrick Kenney and Antonio Smith, two of his teammates on the Courtland High School football team, showed up. "I said, 'Hey, B is going in there. You guys look out for each other,'" Baron's father said. "They said, 'Yeah, Mr. Braswell.' I said, 'You guys go and have fun.'" The party was supposed to end at 1 a.m. The father was planning to return to get his son at 12:30. Courtland senior Hakim Cardwell had known Baron since the younger Braswell was a freshman at Courtland. The pair played football together on the Cougars' team and became fast friends, though Cardwell didn't know his teammate was going to be at the party. When Cardwell saw Braswell, the pair quickly struck up a conversation and started hanging out. In the dark, packed room--"There were way more than 100 people there," Cardwell said--the group danced, talked to girls and celebrated the end of midterm exams. Several scuffles had already broken out when Cardwell said the real trouble began. "They put on a song called 'Knuck If You Buck' and everyone started jumping around. Usually that happens when that song comes on," Cardwell said. "People started yelling 'Mayfield' and someone said something about Caroline or something of that nature." Cardwell said a scuffle broke out, but he wasn't sure who was involved. He knew Braswell was somewhere nearby. "You couldn't tell who was in the scuffle; everyone was wearing dark-color shirts," Cardwell said. "Everyone was trying to figure out what was going on."
Date published: 1/25/2006
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