Brett Wittner gets new autopsy after WWL Investigation prompts new Washington Parish sheriff to reopen cold case.
Author: David Hammer / WWL Louisiana Investigator
COVINGTON, La. — After 12 years of unimaginable heartache and distress, Donna and David Wittner finally believe their prayers are being answered.
Washington Parish officials exhumed their son Brett’s remains this week for a new investigation of the shooting that killed him on Feb. 25, 2012, when he was just 14.
“I got to see my son again,” Donna said. It “wasn’t in the way I wanted to see him. I just want to thank God for carrying me through this far. And I know that the truth is gonna finally be revealed. And that’s all I’ve been wanting all this time was the truth.”
The investigation in 2012 found Brett could have shot himself accidentally, behind the right ear, with a long-barrel rifle nearly as long as his arm.
There were so many unanswered questions: How could Brett have shot himself at that angle? Why were there two spent shell casings found at the scene but only one bullet was recovered? Why wasn’t the owner of the guns questioned by police? Why did the autopsy report say the recovered bullet was found lodged in an exit wound in the front left of Brett’s skull when X-rays and CT scans from the hospital three days earlier showed that same bullet in a totally different location, in the far back of his head?
Donna and David never believed the investigation was handled properly. Donna protested for years outside the offices of the sheriff, coroner, and district attorney, to no avail.
“Anybody that had any type of position that could have done something ignored us,” David Wittner said.
Then, earlier this year, Dr. Christopher Tape was elected without opposition as the coroner of the Wittner’s home parish, St. Tammany. He was the Lafayette-based private forensic pathologist Washington Parish Coroner Roger Casama had hired in 2012 to perform Brett’s autopsy.
