“Alaskan Bush People” starย Matt Brown’s loved onesย are expressing fears that he is dead.

Matt Brown’s brother, Bear Brown, shared concern about his missing sibling in a series of TikTok posts on May 28 and May 29. Inย the first video, Bear explained that he was “told late last night that Matt took his own life” after being spotted near a river in Okanogan County in Washington.

“Witnesses say that he was seen in a river, at a river or close to a river,” Bear said, adding that police have been scouring the scene but “so far they haven’t been able to find any body. … I can’t confirm it 100 percent, but it looks like it is (Matt).”

Bear also said that Matt has “been struggling for a long time” with “alcohol and drugs and stuff,” which he said was the topic of one of their last conversations when Matt called Bear and “said that he had fallen off the wagon.”

A screengrab of a post from Matt Brown’s Instagram account published on May 6, 2024.
@mattbrown511 Instagram/Handout via USA Today

“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’ve got this,'” Bear said, adding that public speculation Matt’s family “shunned him” is false. He said their mother in particular has been supportive of Matt.

“I would have never thought that Matt would take his own life, honestly. I know he’s had problems and he struggles and stuff like that, but I never thought that.”

The Okanogan County Sheriff’s Department confirmed a witness reported that a man fell into the river

“A caller reported to Okanogan 911 that he had just spoken to a male sitting in the shallow water of the Okanogan River south of Oroville, WA,” aย May 28 press releaseย from the Okanogan County Sheriff’s Department read. “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.”

A search was quickly launched for the man, who was not named in the release, which is still ongoing. Authorities also revealed that “a firearm was recovered from the water in the area where the male was last seen.”

In Bear’sย May 29 video, he said that “there’s a very, very, very small chance” that the subject of the incident isn’t Matt, claiming “all eye-witnesses have said that the description fits Matt’s description to a T.”

“I’m still praying that it’s not and by some miracle that it’s not,” Bear continued.

Matt rose to fame during his time on the early seasons of Discovery Channel’s “Alaskan Bush People,” which ran for 14 seasons from 2014 until 2022. The series followed the Brown family’s life in remote Alaska.