He started reading as a toddler, played piano at age 3, and delivered a high-school commencement speech in cap and gown when he was 10 ? his eyes barely visible over the podium.
Brandenn Bremmer was a child prodigy: He composed and recorded music, won piano competitions, breezed through college courses with an off-the-charts IQ, and mastered everything from archery to photography, hurtling through life precociously.
Then, on Tuesday, Brandenn was found dead in his Nebraska home from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.
He was 14. He left no note.
"Sometimes we wonder if maybe the physical, earthly world didn't offer him enough challenges and he felt it was time to move on and do something great," his mother, Patricia, said from the family home in Venango, Neb., a few miles from the Colorado border.
Brandenn showed no signs of depression, she said. He had just shown his family the art for the cover of his new CD that was about to be released.
He was, according to his family and teachers, an extraordinary blend of fun-loving child and serious adult. He loved Harry Potter and Mozart. He watched cartoons and enjoyed video games but gave classical-piano concerts for hundreds of people ? without a hint of stage fright.
"He wasn't just talented, he was just a really nice young man," said David Wohl, an assistant professor at Colorado State University, where Brandenn studied music after high school. "He had an easy smile. He really was unpretentious."
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What could possibly make a 14-year-old - genius or not - commit suicide? What can make someone that age think there's nothing to live for? This teen suicide increase is really baffling to me.