Dylan Rounds.Photo: Box Elder County Sheriff’s Department
James Brenner, 58, is in custody at the Weber County Jail on unrelated federal firearm charges, according to the Box Elder County Sheriff’s Department.
“When Dylan Rounds was not located early on in the search effort, the investigation focused on the possibility of Dylan being the victim of a crime,” Chief Deputy Cade Palmer of the Box Elder County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday. “The current totality of information gathered from the many interviews and searches, along with the analysis of both physical evidence and forensic data, has identified James Brenner as a suspect.”
Palmer said no criminal charges have been filed against Brenner in connection with Rounds' disappearance.
“The investigation is not complete and remains active,” he said. “Law enforcement investigators are continuing to work to locate Dylan and find answers.”
Rounds last spoke to his grandmother on May 28 and told her he was moving the grain truck from his camper in Lucin — in northwest Utah near the Nevada border — to his shed about five miles away because it had started to rain.
“He just had to get his grain truck in the shed because it was raining and he didn’t want his seed to get ruined,” his mother Candice Cooley previously told PEOPLE.
Cooley, who lives in Idaho, found out on May 30 that nobody in the family had spoken to Rounds since then.
“I would go three or four days without talking to him and then I’d talk to him five days in a row,” she said. “But he was always in contact with somebody. So, when we all put together that nobody talked to him, that’s when we all headed down to the farm.”
Once there, Cooley said they found his grain truck in the shed. A search and rescue team later discovered his boots behind a pile of dirt.
Those were his only pair of boots, she said.
His camper was also searched. “There was no wallet, no phone,” said Cooley.
Cooley added that the key fob to his pickup was also missing and the truck was locked. “Dylan never locks anything,” she said. “And his pistol’s gone. As hard as it is, and as much as I hate to say it, I’m about 99 percent sure somebody murdered my son.”
Suspect Allegedly Asked Friend to ‘Safe Keep’ Guns
During a search of Brenner’s trailer on June 16, authorities found ball ammunition, ignition caps, black powder and speed loads “all related to ‘muzzle loading,'” the complaint states. In another search on June 21, authorities confiscated boxes of ammunition and a muzzle loader.
Missing in America Network
“When [the friend and neighbor] asked ‘why,’ Brenner stated that he needed to do this for ‘his own safety’ and that ‘the last time he had trouble with the law they took everything from him, and he did not want the things he had left to be taken again,” the complaint states.
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The following day, the witness told the FBI that Brenner also told him to hold onto a loaded .22 caliber rifle.
Cooley said that ever since her son was very young, he dreamed of one day owning his own farm.
“Dylan was out building his life,” she said. “His lifelong dream was to have his own farm. He has spent the last two summers ripping out and redeveloping that ground on his own. He got his water rights. He did everything. And this year his grain was finally coming up. He finally got a crop. He got his pivot up. It was a fully functional farm.”
“From the time he was little, he just wanted to farm,” she said. “He was your true American farmer. Dylan would’ve been one of those good old boys in his overalls, in the coffee shop, chewing straw, drinking coffee. That’s what he was. That’s what he was born to be.”
An arraignment and detention hearing on the federal firearm charges is scheduled for Friday.
Anyone with information on the case is asked to contact the Missing in America Network at (844) 642-5678, the Anonymous Tip Line at (844) 642-5678, or the Box Elder County Sheriff at (435) 723-5227, (435) 734-3894 and (435) 257-3131. You can also leave a message on the Elder County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page.
source: people.com
