“Alaskan Bush People” star Bear Brown believes his older brother Matt Brown might be dead.
Bear took to TikTok Thursday to share “some really bad news” with his followers, saying he had been told that Matt — the eldest sibling of the Brown bunch — “took his own life.”
Although Bear, 38, “can’t confirm that that’s true,” he said Matt, 43, “was seen in a river, at a river or close to a river” and later “floating down the river.”
According to Bear, someone then “called police,” who have been “trying to find the body.”
“All the witnesses are saying that it was Matt,” Bear lamented. “Someone definitely did, and a lot of people are thinking that it’s him. … It looks like it is. … It’s looking very likely that it is the case.”
Bear noted that Matt “has been struggling for a long time with alcohol and with drugs,” but insisted the family did not “shun” him. Instead, Matt allegedly “didn’t want anything to do with the family.”
Bear claimed he talks to Matt infrequently and “encourage[s] him to stay on his path and keep on his sobriety stuff.”
In fact, he said they ran into each other at a Walmart “a little bit ago.”
“That was the last time I saw him,” Bear shared. “And he called me after that, and he said that he had fallen off the wagon. And I was like, ‘Well, get back on it, man. Everybody falls off. Just get back on it. Go to rehab if you’ve got to. You got this. You’ve fought it a lot before.’”
Bear added that Matt was also apparently “going through a really bad breakup” with “a girl he really liked.”
“I guess he had been drinking too much. I don’t know all the details to it,” Bear said, thrice repeating that he “would’ve never thought that Matt would take his own life.”
With tears in his eyes, Bear asked fans to be “respectful,” especially toward the brothers’ mom, Ami Brown. (Patriarch Billy Brown died in February 2021.)
“Please don’t blame her. Mom cares very much for Matt and always has and has been through a lot for him. A lot. So please don’t attack my mom,” Bear begged.
Shortly before Bear made his emotional announcement, the Okanogan County Sheriff Office in Washington — where Matt lived — announced in a press release that someone had called 911 on Wednesday to say that they had just spoken to a man sitting in the shallow water of the Okanogan River, which is south of Oroville.
“The caller turned away from the man sitting in the river, heard a sound, turned back toward the man in the water and saw the man was face down in the water drifting away in the current,” the press release read, revealing that a gun was recovered from the area where the man was seen.
Officers from various agencies were dispatched to the location but were unable to find the man in the river, so they launched a search.
Though the search “remains ongoing,” the “elevated runoff water levels make difficult and dangerous search conditions of low visibility, elevated current speed and debris in the water.”
The press release noted that the identity of the man was unconfirmed and would not be released.
A few hours after the memo was shared, a status appeared on Matt’s Facebook, which notably has a feature that allows users to schedule posts.
“Hi friends 
,” the message began. “Sometimes, the hardest task you must do everyday is to keep going. You know you can just lay there on your bed the whole day, but something inside you whispers hope to get up and urge you to fix yourself. I guess you are a strong person to handle some heavy situations like this. And I guess you must be proud of it.”
The message continued, “I know all this time, you’ve been trying hard to survive a day with deep sadness and you’ve been trying to find an escape from it. It is not easy darling, it will never be easy to pick yourself up again after a great downfall.
“One thing that you should keep in mind is that whether you’re okay or not, time won’t just stop for you, you may be tired of trying to fix yourself over and over again, but trust your own strength darling. Tell yourself that you will never give up till the day you found your happiness.”
Last week, a nude Matt — who was seemingly drunk and/or high — rambled while carrying what appeared to be a gun in an alarming livestream uploaded to YouTube.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, contact the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.
