Matt Brown, who appeared on Discovery Channel‘s Alaskan Bush People, has died at 42.
His brother, Bear Brown, confirmed the news overnight after a body recovered from a Washington river was positively identified as Matt.
“They found a body in the river a few hours ago and it was positively identified as being Matt,” Bear, 38, said in a video shared to Instagram.
Matt was the eldest of Billy and Ami Brown’s seven children, though he also had an older half-sister from his father’s previous relationship. According to Bear, their younger brother Noah was present when the body was recovered and helped authorities identify him.
“Noah was there when they found him and helped them pull him out of the water, and Noah identified him,” Bear said.
While officials have not yet released a final determination, Bear addressed what he believes may have happened.
“It’s I would have never suspected he would have hurt himself, honestly. He struggled for a long time, as I’ve mentioned. And I worried he was going to end up, like, OD’d or something like that,” he said. “I didn’t think he would hurt himself. It does look as thought the injury is self inflicted. Obviously, the coroner and stuff still has to look at him and stuff, but I thought that y’all guys should know that it is him.”
The confirmation came two days after Bear publicly shared fears that something had happened to his brother.
In a TikTok video posted Thursday, Bear said he had received reports suggesting Matt had died, though he stressed at the time that he had not been able to independently verify the information.
“I’m being told that late last night, that Matt took his own life. Like I said, I can’t confirm that that’s true, but witnesses say that he was seen in a river, at a river, or close to a river, and that he took his own life and they saw him, like, floating down the river,” he said.
Bear also pushed back on the perception that the family had distanced itself from Matt, describing years of struggles with addiction and estrangement.
“He has been struggling for a long time, you know, with alcohol and drugs and stuff,” Bear said. “And he has done a lot of stuff that people, like, don’t even know about. Everyone thinks that the family has, like, shunned him and won’t have anything to do with him, but that’s not actually the case. He didn’t want anything to do with the family.”
Reality TV fans first met Matt on Alaskan Bush People, Discovery’s long-running series chronicling the Brown family’s attempts to live off the grid. The show ran for 14 seasons between 2014 and 2022 and made household names of several members of the sprawling Brown family.
Matt appeared throughout the show’s early years before entering rehab in 2016.
“I could see myself spiraling,” he told People at the time.
“There was a lot of anxiety,” Matt said of telling his parents about his drinking. “It took a couple days to work up the guts to tell my parents. But their support was unbelievable. It instantly made me feel better and like I could be successful on this journey.”