“I just know my baby called me on the phone, FaceTimed me, and she said, ‘Mom, help me.’ And by that time, he hung her phone up. And that’s the last time I heard her voice.”
Those words came from a mother who had just arrived home to find her world shattered. She had been on the road, driving back from Austin, when her sixteen-year-old daughter Lauren FaceTimed her in terror. By the time she reached the house on Canton Trace Lane in Houston, officers were already there. They stopped her before she could get inside.
“I was there for about three minutes before I heard two shots go off,” she later recalled. “And I could just remember running up to the house and the officers telling me to go back to my car.”
On April 29th, 2022, Lauren Juma was held at gunpoint and fatally wounded inside her own bedroom. The person responsible was her mother’s longtime live-in boyfriend, sixty-year-old Van Henry Brisbane. Lauren was a sophomore at Nimitz High School who had just made the cheer squad she’d always dreamed of joining. Her life was just beginning—until it was cut short by a man everyone believed could never hurt her.
The relationship between Lauren and Brisbane had seemed ordinary on the surface. He had been with her mother for at least five years, living in the family’s Texas home for the last three. He was a constant presence at dinners, holidays, and school events. To the outside world, he was just the boyfriend—a man who helped around the house, who drove Lauren to practice sometimes, who called her family.
But in the early hours of April 29th, 2022, Lauren woke to find Van Brisbane standing in her darkened bedroom, watching her in a way that made her blood run cold. She knew immediately that something was deeply wrong. She grabbed her phone and FaceTimed her mother, who was in Austin for work training.
“Mom, he’s acting weird,” Lauren said. She asked her mother to tell Brisbane to leave her room. Her mother did—audibly, over the call.
Then Lauren’s voice changed. It went from confused to terrified in a single breath. “Mom, he has a gun.”
The call disconnected.
Lauren immediately called her older sister, nineteen-year-old Carica, who was already serving in the Air Force. “You need to pick me up right now,” Lauren said. “He’s being really weird.”
Carica didn’t hesitate. She drove toward Canton Trace Lane while simultaneously calling 911 to report that her mother’s boyfriend was holding her sister at gunpoint. Harris County Sheriff’s deputies were already en route when Carica pulled up to the house.
“I was there for about three minutes,” Carica later said, “before I heard two shots go off.”
Deputies approaching the residence heard screaming. Then a single shot. More screaming. Then a second shot. Almost immediately, a man walked out the front door. He was adjusting his pants, calm, unhurried. He looked at the officers and said four words: “Do what you have to do.”
They took him into custody without resistance.
Inside the house, deputies found Lauren. Her body was discovered with her clothes in disarray. Evidence at the scene suggested Brisbane had intended to assault her before taking her life. The condition in which she was found, combined with the state Brisbane was in when he exited the home, pointed to a motive that no one who had trusted this man for five years could have imagined.
From the moment of his arrest, deputies noted he was intoxicated and refused to cooperate. He declined to speak with detectives or explain what had happened inside the home. Because he was a lawful resident and would not consent to a search, deputies had to obtain a warrant before they could fully process the crime scene and recover critical evidence—the weapon, forensic samples, and items establishing the attempted assault.
He was charged with capital murder. The capital designation stemmed from the element of assault that prosecutors believed had occurred or had been intended. His bond was set at one million dollars and later doubled to two million.
Van Henry Brisbane was sixty years old at the time of the incident—four decades older than Lauren. According to some reports, he had faced charges decades earlier in Phoenix and Chicago, though the details of those cases remained unclear. No convictions were publicly confirmed at the time of his arrest in 2022. What is clear is that Lorie Young, Lauren’s mother, trusted him enough to have him living under the same roof as her daughter.
Lorie later told investigators she had been on the phone with Lauren before the call disconnected. She heard her daughter’s fear. She heard her daughter say the words “he has a gun.” And then the line went dead. By the time she arrived home, it was already over.
The community gathered the same evening for a vigil. Lauren’s Nimitz High School cheerleading squad showed up in uniform to honor one of their own. Balloons were released into the darkening sky. The cheer squad performed, their voices cracking, their movements sharp with grief.
In the days that followed, a GoFundMe was created to help the family with funeral expenses. It raised over twenty thousand dollars. On May 7th, 2022, Lauren’s funeral was held at Pilgrim Journey Baptist Church in Richmond, Texas. Viewing at noon. Service at one. Afterward, she was laid to rest at Murphy Jones Cemetery in Fort Bend County. The cheer squad performed again. They wore pink—Lauren’s favorite.
One of her coaches stood before the girls and spoke through tears. Lauren had been so excited to make the team. She couldn’t wait to get her pink uniform. The coach had created a small stuffed bear in Lauren’s honor. She called it Sprinkle. She gave each girl one to keep.
“Lauren will never be forgotten,” the coach said. “She will always be our champion.”
The legal process moved slowly. Brisbane remained in Harris County Jail on that two million dollar bond. Prosecutors began building their case for capital murder. In October 2024—more than two years after Lauren’s death—he went to trial.
The proceedings lasted nine days. Assistant District Attorneys Katie Warren and Gina Gilmore presented body camera footage from the night of the incident. They presented forensic examination results, crime scene photographs, and testimony about what had been found inside that house on Canton Trace Lane.
The jury heard recordings of Lauren’s screams, her cries for help, and then the shots. “Not easy to listen to,” lead prosecutor Katie Warren admitted. Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg was direct in her characterization: “This defendant was a predator with a weapon, and his choice to hurt a young girl and take her life was senseless and horrific.”
On October 17th, 2024, after hearing all the evidence and deliberating, the jury returned with their verdict: guilty of capital murder.
The mandatory sentence for capital murder, when death is not sought, is life without the possibility of parole. Van Henry Brisbane, now sixty-two years old, would spend the rest of his life in prison.
Lauren’s father, Sajad, and stepmother, Christina, spoke to reporters after the verdict. Sajad remembered his daughter as caring, beloved by everyone who knew her. She had recently gotten her first job. She had moved schools to better herself. She used to tell him, “Dad, I’m going to get a job. I’m going to get my own car.”
“She just did that,” he said. “She just got her first job.”
When asked about Brisbane, Sajad was unflinching. “Death is too good for him. When he walked outside and said ‘do what you got to do,’ he was looking for death. And it’s too good for him. He needs to rot in prison.”
Lauren’s cousin, who had grown up alongside her, spoke with a voice heavy with conflict. “I love my uncle. He is my uncle. I’m always going to be here for him. But at the same time, you have to understand that people have to be accountable for their actions. If we don’t hold people accountable for the things that they do wrong, then people will continue to do wrong. You can’t determine what’s right or what’s wrong based off of a blood relation.”
She paused, her voice breaking. “I love my uncle to death. I swear I do. But I will never be able to understand how he did something like this to Lauren. He loved Lauren. Lauren loved the life out of him. How he could take her life from her—I can never understand it.”
But beyond the courtroom, another narrative was unfolding. One that played out in comment sections and social media posts where people who claimed to know the family told two very different stories.
Some people pointed to alleged warning signs. They said the abuse had been visible—bruises, complaints, red flags that should have triggered intervention. They argued that Lauren had been let down by the people who should have protected her. Someone should have seen what was coming.
One person who claimed to have known Lauren personally wrote: “Honestly, I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I knew Lauren. That man harmed that little girl. She would come to school all bruised from him. She came to my house many times after leaving her house because of him. Her mother was wrong for leaving her there with him, knowing how he treated her. That girl had so much to live for, and he just took it all away from her. I’m more upset about the way she passed than her passing. She just got her first job and moved schools to better herself, and it all got taken in a blink of an eye after that man touched her. And she told her mom, and her mom told her, ‘You’re crazy. Stop telling those serious lies.'”
Another person, claiming to be the family’s neighbor, offered a completely different perspective. “They are my neighbors. I am very close to them and will say Lorie, Lauren’s mother, is a great mother who loves her daughters very much. She was so protective of Lauren. You all are so wrong for passing judgment on a grieving mother who just lost her baby girl. All these false accusations and speculations are just straight ridiculous. She was with that man for almost six years, and they were near common law married. They were a family like every other family. You cannot continue to criticize and blame her for his horrible actions. It’s not right, and it’s not fair.”
Two people. Two completely different versions of what life was like in that house on Canton Trace Lane.
The truth may never be fully known to the public. What is known is that on April 29th, 2022, a sixteen-year-old girl called her mother for help, and before help could arrive, her life was ended by a man four decades older than her—a man her mother had trusted, a man who had lived in their home for three years, a man who walked out of that house adjusting his pants with four words for the waiting officers: “Do what you have to do.”
Lauren’s older sister, Carica, had pulled up to the house just before the shots were fired. She heard them from her car. She ran toward the house, but officers stopped her. She never made it inside. She never got to hold her sister’s hand one last time.
Months later, when Nimitz High School held its graduation ceremony for the class of 2024—the class Lauren should have been part of—a family member posted on social media: “Everyone, please stop what you are doing and put purple hearts in the air. My little cousin Lauren graduates today. Lord, I have been in tears all morning. For those who do not know, Lauren’s life was taken away in a horrendous act by a sick individual, to say the least. She was sixteen. Only sixteen. Nimitz High School still honored her with her own seat at the graduation today, with her name on it. They will also be calling her name like she never left. This hurts. I’m angry, sad, and happy all in one. Pray for her mother and father, her family who loved her with everything in them. Lauren, you will always live as long as we have breath, my baby. Love you always.”
An empty chair with her name on it. A diploma she would never hold. A future that ended two years earlier in a bedroom where she should have been safe.
Van Henry Brisbane will spend the rest of his life in prison. He will never walk free again. He will never see another sunrise outside of a cell. But Lauren will never see another sunrise at all.
The cheer squad still has her pink uniform. Her father still has her job applications. Her mother still has the last FaceTime call playing over and over in her head. And somewhere in a high school hallway, there is a photograph of a girl with a bright smile, a girl who made the squad, a girl who wanted to join the Air Force like her big sister.
She never got the chance.
This story does not end with justice. It ends with a question mark. How many more Lauren? How many more girls will be failed before the system changes—before warning signs are taken seriously, before predators are stopped before they strike, before mothers are supported instead of shamed, before children are believed when they say something is wrong?
Lauren’s cousin said it best: “If we don’t hold people accountable for the things that they do wrong, then people will continue to do wrong.”
Van Brisbane is in prison. But the harm he caused will ripple outward for generations. A mother who will never stop blaming herself. A sister who heard the shots. A father who will never walk his daughter down the aisle. A cheer squad that performs with one less voice.
And an empty chair at graduation, with a name on it that will never answer roll call again.
This response is AI-generated, for reference only.