Parents of boy killed by 4-year-old awarded $572K

TOMS RIVER - Brandon Holt was conscious, gasping for air and struggling to breathe for a half-hour after he was shot in the head by his 4-year-old playmate in Toms River in 2013.

The .22-caliber rifle that fatally wounded Brandon had lain unsecured and loaded underneath the bed of the 4-year-old’s parents for five to six months before the accident.

Those were reasons cited Monday by Superior Court Judge Robert E. Brenner in awarding more than $500,000 in damages to Brandon’s parents, Christine and Ronald Holt, in their wrongful-death lawsuit against their former neighbors, Anthony and Melissa Senatore.

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Brenner awarded the Holts $572,588 to compensate them for Brandon’s pain and suffering, his medical and funeral bills, and their loss of his future companionship. The judge cited the testimony of the child’s parents that their boy was conscious, gasping for air and struggling to breathe for a half-hour after being shot and prior to slipping into a coma and eventually dying.

The judge also awarded the Holts punitive damages for what he said was a wanton disregard for Brandon’s life.

"To leave this rifle under the bed for five or six months, in this court’s mind, is an act of willful or wanton disregard of the rights of another," Brenner said. "There were children in the house."

The punitive damages will be based on the Senatores’ financial status and will be determined at a future hearing, Brenner said.

"The money is not going to bring Brandon back," Donna Elefante of Toms River, the victim’s paternal grandmother, said at the Ocean County Courthouse after the trial in the civil case Monday.

But Christine Holt said afterward the award represents justice for Brandon.

Her child’s death was "a completely avoidable situation," she said to reporters outside the Ocean County Courthouse.

The judge’s award sends the message to others to "lock up your guns," Christine Holt said.

Anthony Senatore and his attorney, Robert Eberrup, declined to comment as they left the courtroom. Melissa Senatore did not show up for the hearing.

Brandon was shot in the head by the Senatores’ 4-year-old son as the two played on McCormack Drive in Toms River on April 8, 2013. The victim was flown to Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, where he died the following day.

The trial lasted a little more than an hour. Anthony Senatore, 36, who spent nine months of a three-year sentence in prison before being released on parole, was the first witness called to testify by Kevin L. Parsons, the Holts’ attorney.

MORE: Anthony Senatore sentenced in death of Brandon Holt

During Senatore’s testimony, it was revealed for the first time that the weapon was left loaded and unsecured under his bed for months, not days as originally thought.

Parsons asked Senatore if the rifle was kept loaded, wrapped in a towel and unsecured under his bed for 30 days prior to the accident.

"No sir, it was a little bit more than 30 days," Senatore responded.

EDITORIAL: Senatore sentence struck fair balance

When Parsons asked him how long the gun was under the bed, unsecured, Senatore responded, "Five or six months."

Christine Holt, 40, said one of the Senatores' children came running to her home on the day of the shooting to tell her Brandon had been hurt. When she ran to him, he was lying on the bench of a golf cart, bleeding from the mouth, still conscious but gasping for air and unable to talk, Christine Holt testified.

"I just kept telling him I love him, help was coming," she said.

The mother began crying and dabbing at her tears with a tissue when Parsons displayed Brandon’s first-grade school picture. Christine Holt cried some more when she testified that Brandon was "crashing" in the intensive care unit when she arrived at the hospital. It was only then that she learned her son had been shot, she said.

Ronald Holt, 46, testified that he went running to the golf cart, where Anthony Senatore was holding Brandon, and the two of them laid him down.

"As I was approaching the golf cart, I asked (Senatore) what happened, and he said, ‘His eye got grazed with a pellet gun,’ ” Ronald Holt testified.

Anthony Senatore disputed that. He testified he told Ronald Holt "that he was shot."

He testified he heard a shot that day and turned around and saw his son holding the rifle.

"I immediately removed it from his hand and threw it in the garage," Senatore testified. "With that, I was going to discipline him. My daughter came running around and said, ‘Brandon was shot.’ ”

Ronald Holt said when he got to Brandon that day, his eye was "really swollen," and the boy was "trying to catch his breath."

Parsons asked Ronald Holt if he had any indication that Brandon wanted to follow in his footsteps as a plumber.

"He loved playing with tools," the father responded. "No matter what I did, he was there with me."

Senatore, in pleading guilty in 2014 to two criminal counts of child endangerment, said he had taken the gun from a locker one night when he heard a noise but then put it under the bed and left it there. There also were four shotguns with ammunition, accessible to his three children ages 12, 8 and 4, at the time of Brandon’s death.

READ: Dad admits guilt in son's shooting of Brandon Holt, 6

"My client certainly did not want this to happen, not to Brandon, not to anybody else," Ebberup said at the close of the civil trial.

Eberrup said his client’s "terrible forgetfulness" was to blame.

But Parsons, in his closing remarks, asked, "How do you forget there’s a loaded rifle, with three children in the house?

"For five to six months, there’s a ticking time bomb underneath the bed," he said.

Melissa Senatore also is to blame, Parsons said.

"At no point did she look under there (the bed) and say, ‘What is that?’ ” Parsons said.

READ: Brandon Holt's death leads to proposed stricter gun law

"There are no words, there's no sentence, there’s no argument I can give that will come close to explaining or expressing what these folks have been through," Parsons said, referring to the Holts.

Both sides stipulated to the facts of the case prior to Monday’s trial, which focused only on the damages suffered by the Holts. A date for a hearing on punitive damages has not been set.

Since Brandon’s death, the Holts have had another child, a now-18-month-old boy, Christine Holt said. The family is in the process of moving to Stafford, she said. They have since established a charity in their son’s name, called "Brandon’s Elves," to provide Christmas presents to children from underprivileged families in Ocean County, she said.

Kathleen Hopkins: 732-643-4202; Khopkins@app.com