Matt Brown, a member of the family featured in the Discovery Channel documentary «Alaskan Wilderness» , died. He was 43 years old.
On Saturday evening, Matt's brother, Bear Brown, announced that his body had been identified hours earlier in a nearby river and that he had apparently committed suicide.
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«"This is Matt news," he said in a TikTok video. "A few hours ago, a body was found in the river, and it was identified as Matt. Noah [Brown, their brother] was with him and helped pull him out of the water, and Noah identified him.".
«"Honestly, I never would have suspected he would have harmed himself. He'd struggled with addiction for a long time, as I mentioned. I was so afraid he'd die of an overdose or something like that, I didn't think he'd harm himself. It looks like the injury was self-inflicted. Of course, the medical examiner still has to examine him, but I thought you all should know it was him," Bear added.
The Okanogan County Sheriff's Office said in a statement that they received a 911 call on Wednesday from a person reporting a man sitting in the shallows of the Okanogan River south of Oroville, Washington. The caller turned away momentarily, heard a sound, and then saw the man "face down in the water, being carried away by the current." The sheriff's office reported that a firearm was recovered from the water where the man was last seen. The search for the man was suspended at 4 p.m. Thursday due to adverse weather conditions.
Bear previously said Matt had been struggling with drug and alcohol addiction for "a very long time" and that he had become increasingly concerned about him.
In a video on Saturday, Bear asked his followers: "Please be respectful of my family and my mom. And please be mindful of the comments you leave. Sometimes words can hurt more than fists.".
«"A lot of people leave negative comments on Matt's videos. In one of his latest videos, he actually talked about how negatively people respond to his posts. And you have to remember that the people on the other side of the screen, the people you see in the videos, are real people too.".
Matt Brown, who appeared in the first eight seasons of the documentary series «Alaskan Wilderness» From 2014 to 2019, he was the eldest child of Billy and Ami Brown, who built a life with his family far from civilization. Billy died of an epileptic seizure at the age of 68 in 2021.
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