Family demands answers for Black man found hanging from basketball rim in Sacramento

Candles, flowers, photos and signs demanding a FBI investigation were placed in the center of a south Sacramento basketball court not far from where a Black father of four was found hanging from a basketball rim.

The family and friends of 38-year-old Willie Brown Jr. gathered for a candlelight vigil there Friday night alongside community activists to share their grief and demand answers from authorities about what happened to him.

Brown Jr. was found about 8:30 a.m. Monday at Countryside Community Park along Meadowhaven Drive, just east of Power Inn Road, according to the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, which is investigating the incident.

His family has said he’s being kept alive by life support machines, relying on ventilators to keep his lungs functioning. But they say his brain has not been responsive.

His brother, Jonathan Brown, said it’s been difficult for him to see his brother in a hospital bed and non-responsive. And that’s not the image of his brother he wants remain ingrained in his memory. He said authorities need to investigate further; not “try to sweep it under the rug.”

“I want to get to the bottom of this,” he told several dozen people gathered at the park. “I just hope that somebody in this community say that they seen something. ... I’m not taking that suicide for an answer.”

Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Rodney Grassmann said Friday afternoon that investigators have found no evidence to indicate foul play was involved.

“There is nothing to indicate that this is anything but a suicide,” Grassmann told The Sacramento Bee. He also said detectives have shared some of that information with Brown’s family.

Sandra Brown, Brown’s mother, said the Sheriff’s Office has not given her or her husband a call to talk about what happened to her son.

“It breaks my heart even now speaking about it. I don’t know what happened; I wish I did. But the little bit I heard just don’t add up,” she those gathered for the vigil. “And I’m standing here today expecting, demanding a full and thorough and complete investigation to tell me what happened to my son.”

The mother said she won’t be able to rest until she knows what happened to her son, “because the boy that I know I don’t think could’ve done anything like this to himself.”

She said her son is a highly intelligent man who loved his children dearly. In a recent conversation, Brown told his mother that he really wanted to see his kids, but he had to work all the time.

Brown’s family has started a GoFundMe account to raise money to help pay hospital bills and any future expenses.

“It does not sit right with the family understanding the historical record of Black men being found dead with their deaths ruled suicide all the while being victims of white supremacist hate crimes,” Jaysean Brown, Brown’s oldest son, wrote on the Gofundme page. “We have seen a pattern of Black men being hung over the last few months all the while witnessing the violence white supremacist terror groups have been planning and executing in the same time frame.”

There was also an outcry for answers this summer in Southern California, after two Black men were found hanging from trees. Their bodies were discovered within two weeks of each other and not long after the May 25 killing of George Floyd, who was handcuffed and pinned to the ground by a white Minneapolis police officer’s knee.

Malcolm Harsch, 38, was found hanging from a tree near a Victorville library May 31. A few weeks later, his family announced that Harsch took his own life, saying police showed the family “video evidence,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

Robert Fuller, 24, was found hanging from a tree near Palmdale City Hall June 10. About a month later, Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department investigators concluded that Fuller died by suicide. Sheriff’s officials said a thorough investigation found no signs of foul play and showed Fuller had previously exhibited suicidal behavior, according to the Times.

In 2017, suicide was the second leading cause of death for African Americans ages 15 to 24, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health. In that same year, the death rate from suicide for African American men was more than four times greater than for African American women. But the overall suicide rate for African Americans is 60 percent lower than that of the non-Hispanic white population.

Ongoing police violence against Black men and women, a global pandemic killing Black people in disproportionately high numbers comes at a heavy mental and physical cost, mental health experts say. Something that continues to be assessed.

“It takes a huge toll — a societal toll,” Sacramento psychologist and family therapist La Tanya Takla told The Sacramento Bee last month. “We are a group of people who have been dehumanized. We’re seen as having a different experience. We work in the same places, but experience dehumanization that is demoralizing.”

Brown’s family and friends say they want definitive answers about what happened to Brown, and what circumstances might have led him there. They prayed Friday for his recovery and for justice.

“I never thought I’d be standing in front of a candlelight vigil ... for my brother to be strung up on a basketball hoop in this park,” Antwoyn Brown, Brown’s oldest brother, told those gathered at the park. “It doesn’t make no sense.”

The community group, SacNeighbor, has created a link for anyone with information about what happened to Brown to provide tips to the FBI.