A man who led the search party to find Alaskan Bush People star Matt Brown is detailing the challenging mission — and the gut-wrenching moment they discovered his body.
“A very personal friend of mine called me and told me that Matt said he was on a mission from Jesus,” Chay Wilkerson Moore told the US Sun in an interview published on Wednesday, June 3. “And we had no clue what any of this meant.”
Moore explained that the group — which included Matt’s girlfriend, Jaime, and his brother Noah Brown — looked for the reality star by the Okanogan River in Washington. Moore recalled waiting until after the Okanogan County Sheriff’s Office conducted their search before he enlisted volunteers on social media.
“Basically, we had four people, and they brought whatever we could find, which were kayaks from Walmart,” Moore said. “I mean, we literally had two kayaks and a little narrow fishing boat. In fact, I felt that I was too big to get in the fishing boat to assist because, you know, I’m a pretty big guy.”
Given the search party’s familiarity with the Okanogan River, Moore recalled the group feeling “quite confident” they would find Matt. Moore recalled the group navigating the river via kayaks, detailing the situation as “very tedious.” Ultimately, the search party spotted a brown jacket Matt had been wearing in the water.
Moore recalled the group feeling “a lot of emotions” when they found Matt’s body.
“From that point, they approached the body, and they loaded it into the boat, which isn’t a normal practice for us,” Moore said. “We normally call the Sheriff, have them deal with it. But, being that the current was there, they were afraid that they would lose him. And if he went down that river, we would not find him.”
He continued, “And being that they were very close to Matt, I think that their adrenaline kicked in and they loaded him into the boat.”
Moore said that Noah was “in a surreal state of disbelief” when Matt’s body was discovered, while Jaime “was very overwhelmed with emotions.”
“And she was being comforted as Charlie assisted the body down the water, to keep her looking forward and holding her,” Moore said, referring to a volunteer named Charlie.
Matt’s brother Bear Brown confirmed on Saturday, May 30, that the reality star died at age 43. An official cause of death has not been publicly shared. Bear, however, has speculated that Matt’s death was “self-inflicted.”
“I was so worried that he would end up ODed or something like that,” he said in a Saturday social media upload. “I didn’t think he would hurt himself.”
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