Matt Brown, one of the stars of Discovery‘s Alaskan Bush People, has died at the age of 43.
His brother Bear announced the news in a TikTok video posted on Saturday night, saying that a body had been found in a nearby river and had been positively identified as Matt.
Their brother Noah Brown was present and helped pull him from the water.
Bear said the death appeared to be “self-inflicted”, though he noted that the coroner still needed to make a formal determination.
“I would have never suspected he would have hurt himself, honestly,” Bear said in the video.
“He struggled for a long time, as I’ve mentioned. I was so worried he was gonna end up OD’ed or something like that, I didn’t think that he would hurt himself. It does look as though the injury is self-inflicted.”
Bear also took a moment to ask viewers for compassion in the wake of the news.
“Please be respectful to my family and to my mom. And please, watch the comments that you leave, guys. Sometimes, words can hurt more than fists can,” he said, noting that negative comments had been left on Matt’s previous social media posts.
Matt Brown appeared in 79 episodes of Alaskan Bush People across the show’s first eight seasons, from 2014 to 2019.
The series followed Matt, his parents and his six siblings as they lived off the grid in Alaska, and became a significant hit for Discovery.
He had been open about personal struggles in recent years.
