The brother of John Breaux, killed last year on the side of a Lafayette highway as he picked up litter, said he never meant to deceive anyone when he accepted for his own use $7,000 in victim compensation funds that were meant to cover Breaux’s burial costs, the Daily Camera reports.
“I wasn’t sure why they were giving me this money,” David Bright told the newspaper Friday outside Boulder County Jail, where he was formally charged with two felonies. “I never intended to lie, deceive, steal or anything.”
The Boulder County Victim Compensation Fund gave Bright a $7,000 check after he applied for the money in the wake of Breaux’s Jan. 30, 2009, death.
Fund officials allegedly were led to believe that the money was meant to reimburse Bright for out-of-pocket funeral expenses.
They later discovered that the funeral had already been paid for with nearly $13,000 raised by residents of Lafayette and Louisville.
