DELAND — In Thomas Rose’s home, there is a wall covered with the awards and medals he earned for his service in the Vietnam War, an honor wall his grandson Dustin “DJ” Rose would admire every night as he walked up the stairs to his bedroom.
DJ had an inquisitive mind and wanted to know about his grandfather’s time in the Army, and from the age of 6 started dreaming of being a soldier, Thomas said in a recent interview with The News-Journal.
“Every night he went up the stairs to his bedroom he would ask questions about what I did in the Army, where I went, and just ask a lot of questions about the military,” Thomas said. “They made an indelible impression on the young lad’s life.”
That military dream that began at the top of the stairs in his grandfather’s DeLand home was rolling along. DJ had left DeLand Middle School in the eighth grade to start military studies at Camden Military Academy in South Carolina. He graduated from Camden in 2025 and enrolled in The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, in Charleston. His goal was to be a military intelligence officer and a cybersecurity specialist, Thomas said.
But that dream was ended by gunfire that took his life in a desolate lot in downtown DeLand, his grandfather said.
“(DJ) was going to become an army intelligence officer in cybersecurity and also an Airborne Ranger, that was his goal,” Thomas shared sitting outside his DeLand home. “. . . he would have obtained them if he hadn’t been so violently taken out.”
Citadel cadet murdered with childhood friend in DeLand lot by suspect they knew, DeLand police say
In a press conference July 30, DeLand police said the bodies of Dustin Rose, 19, and his childhood friend, Samson Campbell, 18, were found in an industrial lot behind the Athens Theatre.
Both teens died of multiple gunshots, police said.
DeLand police said they worked around the clock trying to determine the motive for the killings and track down the suspected killer.
On Aug 1, DeLand police and a SWAT Team served a search warrant and raided a home in the 1500 block of Loughton Street in the Glenwood Springs subdivision in connection with the murders. Based on surveillance video footage, the police believed a suspect in the murders, Keyan Rundell, 17, was living there.
On Aug. 2, DeLand police obtained an arrest warrant charging him with two counts of second-degree murder, police Chief Jason Umberger said.
On Aug. 5, Rundell was arrested in Manatee County. Umberger revealed in a press conference that Rundell knew Rose and Campbell, and for unknown reasons met with them at the concealed lot behind the Athens Theatre on July 28.
That meeting ended with Rose and Campbell getting shot to death, the chief said.
Who was Dustin ‘DJ’ Rose, the military cadet slain in downtown DeLand?
DJ was a happy boy, bright and inquisitive, Thomas said.
The boy loved McDonald’s and would constantly harass “Papa” to take him there.
“That boy loved to eat,” Thomas said, emitting a tear-laden chuckle as he remembered DJ. “We should have bought our own franchise, if I might say that.”
Thomas said DJ loved school as much as he loved a McDonald’s “Happy Meal,” and took part in every play that he could get in at Citrus Grove Elementary School.
“He was a happy little boy,” Thomas said. “He was just very active at school. He loved drama.”
In second grade, DJ played Drake the Butler in a production of a play based on Orphan Annie. The following year he was one of The Lost Boys in “Peter Pan,” and in fourth grade he dressed up in a red costume playing Sebastian in “The Little Mermaid,” Thomas shared.
“We had the whole red outfit for him. He just loved the drama,” the grandfather said.
DJ asked if he would be allowed to be a soldier, grandfather says
Thomas said he was DJ’s legal guardian, and he officially adopted him as his son around 2020. At the age of 6, DJ came to live with him and his wall of awards and medals caught his attention, the older Rose said.
And the questions about the military began, Thomas said.
“He asked about the military, about the army. Things like that,” Thomas said.
DJ was so much into the military and its history that for a fifth grade project he played Lt. Col. Hal Moore of the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Airmobile Division, Thomas said.
According to The National Museum of the United States Army, Moore was an army leader who led a badly outnumbered 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment during the first major battle of Vietnam War at Ia Drang Valley.
Although he was outnumbered by the North Vietnamese troops, Moore held them off for three days with his skillful use of helicopter mobility, and strategic bombing, according to the National Museum of the U.S. Army.
Thomas said he believed his grandson took particular interest in the Battle of Ia Drang because Thomas was a crew chief on a Huey helicopter that flew into that valley.
“He got to know that story and for his project, he went to school and spoke on the Ia Drang Valley battle,” Thomas said.
Then in sixth grade, DJ asked if he could go to military school. By the time he got to the eighth grade, Thomas said he did some research and found the Camden Military Academy in South Carolina. After a year at DeLand Middle School and as an eighth grade student, DJ started his military studies at Camden, Thomas said.
“It was a preparatory school for The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina,” Thomas said. “And that’s where he set his heart and mind to go. And he went there for next four years at Camden Military Academy, where he graduated in 2025.”
Dustin Rose’s last summer with his DeLand grandparents
While at the military college in South Carolina, DJ kept in touch with his grandparents, and was excited about new things he learned at The Citadel, Thomas said.
Thomas would either pick up his grandson to visit for the holidays or summers, or he would fly to visit him. During his visits, DJ could not get over how much he loved his grandmother Marilyn’s, or “Mamere’s,” spaghetti, Thomas said.
This summer, when DJ finished his first year at The Citadel, he came back to DeLand in May to visit his grandparents. With the excitement of his Citadel stories, he also brought some good news. He had met a young woman who had taken his heart, so much so that he spent two weeks in Los Angeles, California, visiting her, his grandfather said.
“It was a young lady that he met up there (South Carolina),” Thomas said. “His first girlfriend.”
While on his summer break, DJ wanted to make some money, so he got an e-bike and started making DoorDash deliveries, his grandfather said.
“He kept busy,” Thomas said.
DeLand grandfather said son murdered shortly after he dropped him downtown
Thomas said he last saw his grandson DJ around 6:30 p.m. July 28. He drove him to Chess Park in downtown DeLand.
“(DJ and Samson) were going downtown to hang out a little bit at Chess Park over by the old courthouse and grab a bite to eat, or just hang out like they always did,” Thomas recalled.
DJ told his grandfather that he was going to be home by 10 p.m. When his grandson did not come home at the given time, Thomas said he wasn’t worried because his 19-year-old had never given him any problems before.
“I thought maybe he was just goofing off, you know. And he’s never done anything wrong, so I didn’t expect anything was wrong,” Thomas shared.
On the morning of July 29, when the grandparents discovered that DJ had not come home, they called him multiple times on his cellphone, but got no answer.
Thomas said he started feeling something might be wrong, but it never crossed his mind that DJ could be dead.
Thomas said he and his grandson had the same monitoring/tracking system on their cellphones, so he saw that DJ was near El Taco Amigo, a Mexican restaurant where he loved to eat tacos.
After seeing no movement on DJ’s phone, Thomas’s daughter, Rachel, the biological mother of DJ, went looking for him. Rachel ventured out twice to look for her son but could not find him.
As night fell, Thomas said he and his family started to suspect that something terrible might have happened to DJ.
Later that night, Rachel returned to the area where DJ’s phone signal kept pinging and broadened her search. That’s when she found DJ’s and Samson’s bodies, Thomas said.
“She called me and she said, ‘Papa, they’ve murdered him. Somebody murdered him. Somebody’s murdered my baby,'” Thomas said, breaking down. “And that was something I did not expect to hear.”
Thomas said he did not know why his grandson was at the lot where he died.
“I know he was murdered at that time because the last place I saw (his cellphone) move is what I thought was El Taco Amigo, but it wasn’t El Taco Amigo. The last activity I got off his phone was at 6:38 p.m.,” Thomas said.
During the interview, Thomas said Rachel Rose and DJ’s grandmother, Marilyn, were too distraught to talk. His daughter has been having nightmares after finding her son dead, Thomas said.
Risks of military profession did not include peaceful college town of DeLand
Thomas said that when he was told DJ was dead, all his grandson’s conversations about his military dream just mentally flashed before him.
“All of our years of planning, all of our goals we had set, it was just gone,” a sobbing Thomas said.
He said the last conversation with his grandson was him telling DJ he was in the “first quarter” at The Citadel.
“I told him, ‘You’re in your first quarter.’ We finally got through the halftime, and now it’s over,” Thomas said. “The military dream just ended right there in that parking lot. Now we’re going to a military funeral for a young cadet from the South Carolina National Guard at The Citadel. He had a good future ahead. Yes, he did.”
It hurt to know that DJ lost his life in what Thomas considered a safe and peaceful place, he said.
“I never worried about that road (military career) I had put him on here in our small town. I worried about that road going to places in the Middle East or to places like Southeast Asia that I was in, or any other place in this world where I’ve been to,” Thomas said.
Thomas said he had been to Nigeria and seen horrific things, and to Europe where armed guards stood at airports with rifles.
“Those are the places I worried about for him when he started traveling overseas, not in DeLand, Florida,” he said.
― Patricio G. Balona is a crime and public safety reporter covering Volusia County and occasionally Flagler County. His coverage areas include Daytona Beach, DeLand, Ormond Beach and beyond.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Exclusive: Grandfather remembers cadet slain in DeLand
Reporting by Patricio G. Balona, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Patricio G. Balona, Daytona Beach News-Journal | USA TODAY Network
