American dream ends in nightmare with another Aussie gun death

Brenton Estorffe followed his NFL dream but is the latest Australian casualty of US gun violence.

Brenton Estorffe with his wife, Angelenna, and children Asher and Eliana.

Brenton Estorffe left the Sunshine Coast to follow his dream of becoming­ a punter in the NFL and found love instead. But in a random­ act of brutality in his own home in Texas, he became the latest Australian casualty of America’s nightmare of gun violence.

The 29-year-old had been asleep in his home near Houston, Texas, with his American wife and their two children, aged three and one, when the sound of shattering glass woke him up just after midnight on Wednesday morning.

According to police reports, he jumped out of bed and confronted the two intruders who had broken the home’s glass back door.

Within seconds, shots rang out, leaving Mr Estorffe on the ground, mortally wounded. The intruders fled into the night.

Texas police said the incident “breaks your heart”.

“It really happened so quickly,” said Fort Bend Sheriff Troy Nehls. “You hear the glass breakage. You’re startled, you get out of bed. And then, within just a few ­seconds or so, there’s gunfire.”

At 12.03am police received a desperate 911 call saying there had been a shooting at the home. Accord­ing to local media reports, a neighbour ran into the home to try to resuscitate the young Aust­ralian, but it was too late. Police have no reason to believe­ Mr ­Estorffe knew the intruder­s and say nothing was stolen­.

Neighbour Kimberly Patel recentl­y met the family for the first time and said Mr Estorffe was a lovely person. “I can’t even imagine­ what the wife is going though right now,” Patel told local TV station KHOU.

She said there are issues in the area from time to time, but she'd never expected anything like this.

“We’ve left our doors unlocked because we feel this is such a quiet neighbourhood,” Ms Patel said. “So it’s pretty shocking to be honest­.”

Brenton Estorffe with his wife Angelenna.

Mr Estorffe is the third Australian to be shot dead in North America in just over two years.

On July 15 this year, Sydney man Lucas Fowler, 23, and his American girlfriend Chynna Deese, 24, were shot dead on an isolated Alaskan highway, north of British Columbia.

Fowler, the son of NSW police chief inspector Stephen Fowler, and Deese had just set off for a road trip across Canada.

A nationwide manhunt for their teenaged killers ended in a double suicide more than three weeks later, when police discovered their bodies in remote bushland in Gillam, Manitoba — more than 3200km from northern British Columbia.

On July 15, 2017, Australian Justine Damond­, 40, was shot dead by Mohamed Noor, a Minneapolis Police Department officer, after she called 911 to report the suspected assault of a woman in an alley behind her house.

In April this year, Noor was convicted of third-degree murder and manslaughter and sentenced to 12½ years in prison. The city of Minneapolis paid $US20m to her family after they sued for a violation of Damond’s civil rights, one of the largest settlements in a suit involving a police killing.

Tributes to Mr Estorffe began flowing from shocked friends on social media on Thursday night. One former gridiron teammate, Dale Brown, tweeted “RIP Aussie @fomaz1990”.

Mr Estorffe’s family could not be contacted on Thursday night. Originally from Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast, Mr Estorffe studied to become a personal trainer in Brisbane before heading to the US to pursue his dream of becoming a gridiron player.

In 2012 he played one season as an American college football punter for Southern Virginia University, but failed to get re-­selected.

In a university article published in 2012, Mr Estorffe reflected on how grateful he was for the chance to be part of the university’s football team.

“It hasn’t completely set in that I have one more game to play in my collegiate career, but I feel fortunate­ to have been associated with such a great group of individuals over the past two years,’’ he wrote. He played his last college football game for the university that year.

But his passion for the game endured­, his social media accounts littered with glowing tributes to fellow Queenslander turned NFL star, Jesse “Tha Monstar’’ Williams.

Brenton Estorffe with his wife Angelenna.

He had enrolled to study business management at Southern Virginia University but later switched to a finance degree at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas.

In 2015 he married and settled in the small Texan town of Katy, just west of Houston, with a population of just 18,000. He worked as an assistant manager with Enterprise rent-a car.

His brother Cobin, also an aspirin­g gridiron player, moved to Texas to join him five years ago.

“We’re just trying to gather as much information as we can to figure­ out who could have done this,” said Sheriff Nehls.

“It’s sad. Sad. We have a home owner here in Fort Bend County who is no longer with us — and the father of two small children. Breaks your heart.”

The intruders are still on the run. Police are checking security cameras of neighbours to see if they captured any suspects.

“We do have individuals who say they saw a car parked nearby and then after those shots the car speeds off,” Sheriff Nehls said.

A spokeswoman from the Fort Bend County sheriff’s office told The Australian that they had been told Mr Estorffe was an Australian.

“We received a phone call that there had been a shooting … two male suspects broke into the home through the back door and they shot the husband and he did die shortly after being shot,’’ the spokeswoman said.

“There was a wife and two small children in the home and they were not harmed.

“We do not have a vehicle descriptio­n or a description of the suspects.’’

Cameron Stewart is also ­US contributor for Sky News Australia