ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) – The 8-year-old son of a man who tried to kill his four children because an impending divorce would strip him of custody died Tuesday, a hospital official said. A daughter was drowned earlier.
Bryan Randall II died at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children & Women, said hospital spokesman Joe Brown.
The boy was brought to the hospital in critical condition Monday after his father, Bryan Randall, drove his vehicle into the path of a tractor-trailer.
The accident, on Interstate 4 about 15 miles north of Orlando, killed Randall and seriously injured another son, Julian, 6.
Some time over the weekend, Randall dumped his 2-year-old daughter, Yana, and another son, Regal, 4, in a small lake by a suburban Orlando office park. The girl drowned, but the boy was rescued by a fisherman Sunday morning and remained hospitalized in serious condition Tuesday.
In a suicide note found in his wrecked sports-utility vehicle, Randall said, “I had to take them with me.”
Randall’s letter also said his unemployment prevented him from fighting for their custody, and that he wanted to be cremated with the bodies of his four children.
Randall had picked up his children from his estranged wife, Lisa, on Friday and was supposed to return them Sunday night. The couple, married in July 1994, separated over the summer, and she had received a restraining order against him last month.
At a brief news conference Tuesday after her son died, Lisa Randall thanked the public for their support and prayers.
“Just continue with the prayers for my other children,” she said.
Randall was a former basketball star at Dartmouth College. Former teammates and coaches of the Ivy League player tried Tuesday to reconcile their memories of the confident playmaker against the news that Randall had degenerated into a child killer.
Rob Summers was a sophomore when Randall was earning first-team All-Ivy accolades as a senior. He remembered fans “revering” Randall, a team co-captain, during a season when the Big Green won 18 games – their most in almost three decades.
“He was BMOC but he didn’t seek that. He didn’t seek the attention and use it to his advantage,” said Summers, now a pharmaceutical sales representative in Washington, D.C. “He was always accessible to the fans and kids who came to the game.”
“It’s a disturbing, shocking, sad time,” said Dave Faucher, the head coach at Dartmouth and an assistant when Randall was there. “He was a dedicated player and a wonderful person … We don’t have any answers.”
AP-ES-09-16-03 1837EDT
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