Police in Las Vegas are continuing to investigate the presumed murder of a 4-year-old boy remembered by his family as “sweet” and “intelligent.”
According to the Reno Journal Gazette, the boy found dead inside a freezer at a Las Vegas residence on Tuesday has been identified as Mason Dominguez. As CrimeOnline previously reported, Mason’s mother sent a note to school with his older sister on Tuesday morning, writing that she was being held against her will by her boyfriend and concerned for the welfare of her 4-year-old son.
Las Vegas police officers responded to the residence and performed surveillance until the boy’s mother and her boyfriend, Brandon Toseland, left the home in a vehicle. They then questioned the mother, whose named has not been publicly released, and detained Toseland. After searching the home, police found Mason’s body in a freezer in the garage. Toseland, 35, remains in custody and has been charged with the boy’s murder.
Authorities have not yet commented on the boy’s cause of death. In the early stages of the investigation, numerous questions remain about the circumstnaces and timing of the boy’s death and the additional allegations against Toseland, who has been charged with kidnapping.
According to the Reno Gazette Journal, officers who detained Toseland and his girlfriend after the couple left their home in a car noted handcuffs attached to the passenger seat of the vehicle.
Las Veges police homicide Lt. Ray Spencer told the news outlet that investigators do not believe the boy’s mother was involved in his death, but said “there are a lot of questions that we still have to answer about what occurred over the last three months.”
As previously reported, Mason’s mother told police that she had not seen her son since early December. According to police documeents obtained by the Reno Gazette Journal, the woman further told police that Toseland had locked the boy in a master bedroom when he became ill in December, and later told her that the boy had died accidentally. It is unclear if or how any illness conributed to his death.
Toseman is not the father of Mason or his sister, and appears to have been in a relationship with their mother for no more than a year.
Social media posts and GoFundMe pages indicate that Mason’s father died suddenly, of apparently natural causes, in January 2021. A recent GoFundMe campaign to raise burial costs for the boy appears to have been organized by relatives of Mason’s father. According to the campaign’s statement, paternal relatives “couldn’t see Mason” after his father died. The statement also claims that Mason was “murdered by people who … he thought he could trust.”
No one besides Toseman has been charged in connection to the boy’s death.
CrimeOnline will provide further updates when more information is available.
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