Kountze councilman charged with theft; pockets proceeds from gravestone

[TexasTowelie]

[div style="width:50%;"]
Ira Braneff

[div style="width:200%;"]
Keiron Edwards

A Kountze councilman bonded out of the Hardin County jail Sunday after he confessed to pocketing more than $3,000 from a mother who paid him to purchase a gravestone to honor her son.

Ira Braneff posted a $10,000 bond on a charge of theft, a state jail felony, jail officials said.

Braneff, acting as the owner and salesman for Big Thicket Memorials, sold the monument on Feb. 14 to the mother of Keiron Edwards, a Kountze High School student killed in a January car accident, according to the probable cause affidavit.

Braneff told the mother the gravestone would take from eight to 10 weeks to be delivered, according to the document.

More at http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/article/Kountze-councilman-charge-with-theft-5623468.php

[dem in texas]

1. Kountze is where the Dueling Banjo people live

[PDittie]

2. I went to high school with this guy

Can say I never thought he would do something this brazen or stupid. Always seemed like an upstanding fellow. Was a mortician after college, but appears to have moved into the granite marker business.