Police: Teenager shot friend while playing FBI

Jen Lawson

Friday, April 23, 2004 | 10:56 a.m.

Eighth grader Dustin Osborn had a second-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and his goal was to become an FBI agent, his mother said.

But on Wednesday, the boy was shot and killed by his best friend while "playing FBI" with a loaded gun, according to a Henderson Police report.

Jake Reeder, 15, was arrested for murder.

"I can't hug him (Dustin) anymore. I can't hold him anymore," his mother Andrea Glaser said while crying Thursday night. "This could have been prevented by a gun lock that costs $10."

On Tuesday Osborn asked his mother if he could stay home from classes from Greenspun Junior High School on Wednesday, his 14th birthday, Glaser said. He wanted to spend the day with Reeder, who has Wednesdays off.

Glaser said no, but when she woke up Wednesday she found a note her son had left for her saying he had taken the bus to school and he would take it home. She said she knew he had skipped school because he never took the bus.

She called the school and was told Dustin hadn't showed up. Then she phoned Reeder's apartment in the Palm Villas complex on Whitney Ranch Drive near Sunset Road but received no answer.

She drove over to Reeder's apartment just after 11 a.m. to see if he was there.

When she pulled up police and paramedics were there and the apartment was sealed off with yellow police tape.

"Jake has been detained and Dustin might be dead," she was told.

Reeder told police that after his mother went to work, Osborn came over and the pair smoked marijuana. They found a .45-caliber handgun hidden in a washing machine and began playing FBI, where one of them places his hands against the wall and the other wields a gun, according to the police report.

The report says that Osborn tried to remove all of the bullets from the gun because he didn't trust Reeder with the gun. Reeder put Osborn against the wall, facing it, then "shot him in the back of the neck."

Reeder called his mother at work and told her to come home, the report says. Rolema Reeder came home immediately and found Osborn's body in the hallway.

Rolema Reeder later told police that "Jake was crying, stating that he shot Dustin and that he was going to jail."

She called 911 and Henderson patrol officers arrived at the apartment. They ordered Rolema and Jake Reeder out of the apartment via a loudspeaker, then went inside and found Osborn's body. Rescue personnel were called and pronounced Osborn dead.

Police obtained a search warrant and found a .45-caliber bullet casing and a loaded handgun next to his body. An investigator from the coroner's office determined Osborn had suffered a single gunshot wound in the back of the neck.

Glaser had planned to take Dustin to Macayo Vegas for Mexican food for his birthday Wednesday night.

"I didn't get a chance to tell him happy birthday," she said.

Glaser, a single mother and bartender at the Foxy Girls strip club, has no family in the area besides her other son, 16-year-old Kelly. Glaser's friends are rallying around her, helping with funeral arrangements and trying to raise money for the costs.

The funeral, scheduled for Monday, will cost $11,000. Glaser set up an account at Wells Fargo bank for those who would like to make a donation. The account number is 1455424935.

Thursday afternoon, another friend, Christy DeSantis, was creating fliers with Osborn's picture on them asking for citizens to help pay for the funeral. She planned to post them in convenience stores and other public places.

"I don't care if it's just a dollar," Glaser said. "I don't have that kind of money. I expected to go before my 14-year-old son ... I never expected this to happen."

Glaser and the Reeders were good friends and the families went on vacation together. Still, she said, she holds Reeder's parents, not Jake, accountable because the boys should not have had access to the gun.

"Within a month, there are three kids dead because of this," Glaser said, referring to three separate incidents recently in which children were shot after someone found a gun in a home. "Guns kill ... I feel his parents are responsible for not having the gun locked up."

Jake Reeder was her son's best friend, she said, and she doesn't think he pulled the trigger intentionally.

Glaser spoke to Rolema Reeder and asked her why the gun wasn't secured, she said.

"She had no comment to that," she said. "If someone's child came over I would protect them. I thought it was safe. Obviously it wasn't."

Officer Shane Lewis, spokesman for the Henderson Police Department, said at this point there are no plans to charge Reeder's parents with any crime in connection with the shooting, but police are continuing their investigation.

Reeder was arrested for murder despite the fact that investigators have not ruled out that the shooting was accidental.

Metro Police handled similar shootings differently. When 14-year-old Erica Mendoza was shot and killed last month by her brother while he played with a gun, police made no arrests right away.

Instead, Lt. Tom Monahan of Metro's homicide section said, they investigated then submitted a report this week to the district attorney's office, who may or may not decide to charge 15-year-old Rocky Mendoza with a crime. It could take weeks or months before a decision is made.

Less than a week after that shooting, a 13-year-old boy was shot in the stomach by a friend who found a gun in a garage. That boy survived.