Published: May 02, 2008 11:48 am         

Man sought in Texas trooper's killing found dead

LINDEN — A former police officer suspected in the fatal shooting of a state trooper killed himself in Texas on Thursday as authorities closed in on his location, officials said.

The body of Brandon Wayne Robertson, 37, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a brushy area off a county road just outside of Linden in Cass County. The Department of Public Safety said that authorities had been tracking him with the help of several calls he made to 911 and calls others made to a tip line.

Robertson was named in a capital murder warrant in the death of Trooper James Scott Burns, who was killed Tuesday night after pulling over a car near Lake O' The Pines in East Texas.

Burns didn't have a chance to remove his seat belt as he stopped his patrol car, just before getting shot multiple times with a shotgun, authorities said. A passer-by later used the trooper's radio to call for help.

Robertson was an East Texas police officer for seven years at departments in Rusk County, Overton and Kilgore, according to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Education. He left law enforcement in 1999 and was on parole for a drug possession charge.

Robertson's girlfriend was taken into custody Thursday. DPS said that criminal charges are pending against her.

Robertson was arrested by Department of Public Safety troopers as recently as April 6, when he was charged in Cherokee County with possession of a controlled substance. He posted a $7,500 bond the next day.

"I have had my share of troubles in the past after becoming addicted to pain medication when I was injured in a vehicle accident that brought an (eight-year) career in law enforcement to an end," Robertson wrote in a letter to a judge in 2006 in which he pleaded for probation for the drug possession charge.

He served about six months of his four-year prison sentence and was paroled in April 2007.

DPS trooper and spokeswoman Sylvia Jennings has said she did not know what prompted the pursuit that ended with Burns' death.

Burns, 39, is survived by a wife and a 5-month-old daughter.