AUSTIN – The boy was just a few days after his 10th birthday in the morning that they would see their mother, half-sister and her boyfriend alive for the last time, while they stopped in the parking lot with his estranged father for a planned supervised visit.
Instead of greeting his son with hugs and gifts, the father rammed his vehicle into the family car, pulled out a gun and started firing without warning, the boy told police, forcing him to flee and take refuge in a passing driver’s car, according to court documents.
Police investigators accused the boy’s father, Stephen Broderick, 41, of shooting his wife Amanda Broderick (35); his stepdaughter, 17-year-old Alyssa Broderick; and daughter’s boyfriend, 18-year-old Willie Simmons.
As he fled, the boy marked someone who was driving down a nearby road. He broke into her car and told her to call 911, and they drove away, the statement said. As he frantically recounted to the witness what had happened, he told her that his father was angry with his mother for their divorce.
Another woman was there at the time of the shooting, to facilitate visits by spouses and their son under surveillance, it was revealed under the oath of Stephen Broderick. Amanda Broderick was supposed to go out to the parking lot on the Great Hills Trail in northwest Austin late that morning and let the boy supervise.
It is common, the supervisor told detectives, to take the boy inside and then wait for Stephen to come 15 minutes later for a surveillance visit.
But just as she was about to go out into the parking lot, she heard something that sounded like a car crash, followed by gunfire, and she saw two women lying dead on the ground and a man lying on the ground trying to breathe.
She also saw a man she recognized as Stephen Broderick walking away from the scene, the statement said.
Stephen Broderick, a former property crime detective with the Travis County Sheriff, has been charged with murder and is on bail in the Travis County Jail.
He was accused of sexually abusing a child last summer and shot from the sheriff’s office after his arrest.
After being jailed last year, Broderick posted bail set at $ 50,000. Courts ordered him not to contact and not to enter a circle 200 meters from the child who investigators said attacked him. Broderick was also ordered to carry a GPS tracking device, but state district judge Karen Sage later allowed him to remove that monitor.
In an application for a protection order after Broderick’s arrest, the woman said she cared about her safety and the safety of the children.
“I’m afraid they’ll try to hurt me or (that) kids because those allegations came out and I could lose my career,” she said. “Stephen has previous military experience and is trained for SWAT. If he wanted to hurt someone, he would know how.”
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