“Alaskan Bush People” star Matt Brown saw his brother Noah Brown the day before he died by suicide.
It was “just one of those, like, driving by [and] wave-type situations,” Noah told Us Weekly on Monday, going on to share his regrets about not stopping last week.
“I wish I had more time when I drove past,” the 33-year-old confessed. “But … it is what it is.”
Noah, who identified Matt after his body was pulled from a Washington river Saturday, went on to describe his final conversation with his late sibling “two or three weeks” before Matt’s passing.
“I ran into him in the grocery store [and] the last thing I said to him was, ‘Okay, love you more, man,’ which was our thing,” Noah recalled.
“You never know when the last time you’re going to see someone is, so [our family] always [says] how you feel right before you say goodbye, because it could be the last thing,” he added. “Then that was it.”
As for their relationship dynamic prior to Matt’s death, Noah said they were “good” but “kept [their] distance.”
He explained, “In the later years, I realized it was best to just kind of let him do his own thing. … The stress of a large family gets to some people, and it’s just one of those things. [I] just let’s let him live his life.
“He and I were good and I’m very, very thankful for that,” Noah continued. “I do wish, though, that there could have been more, but in the end, that’s kind of always how it is. You always wish that you could have done more, no matter how much it was that you were doing.”
Matt went missing on Wednesday, with the Okanogan County Sheriff Office revealing a 911 caller “heard a sound” at the Okanogan River, turned and saw a man “facedown in the water drifting away in the current.”
A gun was later recovered from the area.
He died by suicide, according to brother Bear Brown’s TikTok video over the weekend.
“I didn’t think he would hurt himself, it does look like the injury is self-inflicted,” Bear told his social media followers. “Obviously, the coroner has to look at him and stuff, but I thought you guys should know it is him.”
Bear, like Noah, ran into Matt prior to his death while out shopping “a little bit ago.”
Matt, who struggled “for a long time with alcohol and drugs,” told his brother that he had “fallen off the wagon,” Bear claimed.
The 38-year-old, at the time, urged Matt to go to rehab.
He insisted via TikTok that his family did not “shun” Matt, alleging instead that his sibling “didn’t want anything to do with the family.”
The Brown family, notably, appeared on Discovery Channel’s “Alaskan Bush People” between 2014 and 2019.
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.
