(Publisher’s Note: A new chapter to this series of stories will publish in the near future so we believe in order to get new readers to discover the series, the best thing to do is to re-publish it beginning today and continue during this coming week. One of the main reasons why Gwen Wood, her daughters, and her friends and family agreed to tell this story was to raise more questions in hopes additional information about this accident would flow their way … and that has taken place thus far.)
(Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of articles that will examine the passing of 19-year-old Colby Brown, a 2018 graduate of Cameron High School, who attended Marshall University in Huntington. Colby was pronounced dead on Aug. 26, 2019, once paramedics treated him in the middle of Interstate 64.)
There was an unexpected knock at the door at the family home at the top of Benwood Hill, and it was finally dark outside on this warm, August evening in Marshall County. When Shelby Brown looked to see who it was, Colby’s sister saw two uniformed police officers on the porch.
What did Mom do now? That’s what Shelby initially thought, especially since Gwen Wood is a 10-time women’s Toughman champion who still can be a quick wick. But that wasn’t it.
“It was about 9:30 p.m., and they asked if Gwen Wood was home, but my mother wasn’t because she was caring for her friend in Charleston,” she recalled. “Then they asked me if I was related to her, and I told them that she was my mother, and they asked if they could speak to me privately outside.
“That’s when they asked if I knew who Colby Brown is, and that’s when I thought Colby may have gotten himself into some trouble for whatever reason,” Shelby said. “I told them that Colby was my little brother, and then they told me he passed away tonight. I asked what happened to my brother, and they really didn’t tell me any information other than he had passed away.”
David Brown, father of Brandi, Shelby, and Colby, was home at the time, but he was in the shower when the officers first knocked. When he realized Shelby was on the porch with the police officers, he entered the conversation.
“He heard me scream when they told me about Colby, and he opened the door and asked what was going on. That’s when I slammed the door shut on him because I didn’t want him to hear it. I thought that if I could just keep it to myself that it wouldn’t be real somehow,” Shelby admitted. “Of course, my dad came back out, and he demanded that the officers find out what happened to him. He told them that they just couldn’t come to our house and tell us Colby was dead without telling us more. Finally, they said that all they knew was that he had fallen off a bridge.
There’s No Way
“But they said nothing about Colby falling onto an interstate, so I didn’t know if they had found him in the water or something like that,” she said. “It wasn’t until later when my dad finally got some more information, but then a friend of Colby’s, John Crow, got ahold of us and he said when he talked to a police officer at a gas station that night that the officer told him that Colby committed suicide.”
The incident was reported by the Huntington 911 dispatcher shortly after 7 p.m. on Aug. 26, 2019, but Colby’s mother was not informed until the family traveled to Charleston, where Gwen was caring for a lifelong friend with cancer.
“When the police finally told us what they thought happened, we knew we couldn’t tell my mom that kind of thing on the phone, so we packed up and immediately left,” Shelby explained. “None of believed it from the very beginning, but we had to go to her and tell her what they told us.
“When we explained it to her, she immediately said there was no way. We all felt the same, too, and the people who knew him thought the same. Not Colby. There’s no way.”
Labeled ‘Missing’ in 15 Minutes
A group of college guys, Madden football on Playstation 4, and a packed bowl of weed is what Colby’s family knows about the 19-year-old’s afternoon at Jon Crow’s residence. According to Crow and the others in attendance, Colby won a couple of games before six young men shared a bowl.
It is at this point where inconsistencies begin, Gwen and her daughter’s believe.
“That’s because one guy said he went down and knocked on the door; another person said he must have splashed water on his face because he was soaking wet; and another guy said that he watched him walk out, get into his car, and drive away,” Shelby reported. “And all of them say that from that moment on, they have no idea what happened.
“But 15 minutes after Colby left, though, they told us, they decided to become a search party, and they contacted all of Colby’s friends, too,” she said. “After only 15 minutes, they had labeled him as missing, and that seems strange to me. Why so quick?”
Crow became good friends with Colby after accepting a summertime pipeline position on a Marshall County project, and Colby welcomed him to the area since there were fellow Marshall University students, Shelby explained. As it turned out, Crow was hired to work on the same crew as Shelby’s boyfriend and father.
Crow rented a residence, in fact, from Colby’s grandfather for only $200 per month at a time when such spaces were worth much, much more.
“Jon and Colby appeared to me to be friends because they were always hanging out and getting along, and Colby was last seen alive at Jon’s house,” Shelby said. “Colby wasn’t really close friends with the other boys who were that at the time, but Colby went there because Jon invited him so they could all play Madden.
“The story that Jon told us was that they all were playing the video game and that they all shared one single bowl pack (of marijuana), and he repeatedly let us know that it was Colby’s weed that he had bought in Morgantown. Then Jon said that suddenly they couldn’t get Colby to talk, and then Colby stood up and said, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’ That’s when he walked downstairs to get to the bathroom. From that point, we really don’t know anything for sure other than I don’t have my brother anymore, and I want to know why.”
Crow, along with the leadership of his fraternity Alpha Sigma Phi, staged a football-related benefit titled “The Colby Brown Showdown” on Sept. 13, 2019, according to Shelby, but it’s been silence ever since.
“I didn’t know what to expect from Jon after Colby was gone, but I can’t say I am surprised we’ve not heard from him since the funeral. I don’t know why that is,” she said. “I just having a feeling someone knows something more, and I don’t know if he’s that someone.
“He spent the entire summer with our family, and my pap charged him only $200 to rent a house that he owns,” she said. “We did Jon a lot of favors that summer, and it just seems odd to me that we’ve not heard from him because he knows us all. He was a part of our family, and he was a follower, and he let Colby lead him around every day.”
Her final text from Jon Crow?
“I sent him a text on September 10, and he replied, ‘Honestly, Shelby, I don’t know. I just know what the state police told me.’”
The Tox Report
There are texts that Gwen Wood has been able to recover from her son’s cellphone and digital footprint, and, of course, there is evidence proving her son had marijuana he purchased in Morgantown, but also there was mention that Colby experimented with “magic” mushrooms, a hallucinogen that is well known to supply a peaceful high.
What else could there be? Colby had just moved into his apartment, had no food in the refrigerator, and he took care of his beloved dog, Penny, before leaving to play video games on his friend Jon’s apartment. The expanded toxicology report from the West Virginia Crime Lab is expected in March, Wood said.
“And I don’t fear the toxicology report. I want it to come back, and if there are drugs in his system, then that will lead us to more questions and hopefully more answers. That’s also when we will know if someone else knows something that they aren’t saying.
“But if it says there were not drugs in his system other than the weed, I believe that should show everyone that something went very wrong,” Shelby said. “That’s because, in his right state of mind, nothing like this would have ever happened.”
At 1:15 p.m., Colby signed into his Marketing Concepts and Applications class, and then at 2:35 p.m., he attended his Principals of Macroeconomic class, and he did that after going to the Marshall Recreation Center for his daily workout. Colby remained on a Promise Scholarship after excelling his freshman year and was geared toward a degree in the business field.
“So, if you were planning to take your own life, why would you go to the gym to improve your body and then spend the last few hours of your life attending your classes on the first day of school? It makes no sense,” Shelby insisted. “If you’re planning on dying that day, why continued working toward your degree? Plus, he would have spent all of the money he had in his savings account if that were his intention, right?
Colby Had Plans
“He had plans with a (female) friend of his that first weekend, and he told me he was excited about it, and when I talked with her, she was shocked because Colby never said a word to her about anything negative,” she said. “The day before he died, I messaged with him to discuss what he needed to buy at the grocery store. He said he was going to call me the next day when he got there so I could help him with all of what he needed. I never got that call.”
Although she’s been hurt by headlines and perception and by the silence from law enforcement and Colby’s friends, Shelby remains staunch in the belief her brother was taken away a different way.
“He was my best friend. Colby was always happy, and when there were low moments in my life or my sister’s life, he was the one who would pick us up and say, ‘None of this matters. You’re going to be somebody. We’re young. None of this matters.’
“He’d tell me that I was bigger than whatever it was I sad over. He’d tell me that our family had a bigger purpose than worrying about the little things,” she remembered. “Colby was always on track from the time he was a little kid, and he did it himself. What 19-year-old walks out the door and every single time tells you that he loves you? My brother did not suffer from any type of mental illness, and I can say that with certainty.”
When it comes to what has been reported to this point, Shelby echoes her mother.
“No way. I knew him inside and out. We told each other everything, and I mean everything, so I knew him, and I can say, 100 percent, I know he did not commit suicide. He was a person that I really, really knew, and there’s no way he would have taken his own life,” Shelby insisted. “He lived with a purpose because it was him who was going to be somebody someday. I have no idea how he ended up where he did, but he didn’t do that.”
A Leaf Falls
Gwen Wood desperately has been attempting to “shake as many trees” as possible the past six months simply because she is as mystified as the rest of her family. Always smiling, the one with the plan, Colby was labeled the “Golden Boy” early on and retained that reputation following his freshman year at Marshall.
And then he jumps off a bridge onto a heavily traveled Interstate 64?
But that’s not why Ricky Cremeans finally decided to contact Colby’s mother. Cremeans was forced to swerve around Colby’s car on McCoy Road Bridge that night, and he and wife parked at the end and walked back to see if they could help.
The first leaf has fallen, she believes.
“He’s a guy who had commented on a post from Huntington, and I messaged him at the beginning of December, but I didn’t hear anything back from him. But then he saw the first story and decided to contact me,” Wood explained. “He told me he drove over that bridge and at that time there was a car parked in the middle of the bridge, and that the door was open. He and the person with him parked at the end of the bridge and walked over to the car to see what was going on.
“They told us that there was another couple walking on the bridge at the same time, and when the guy who contacted me asked what was going on, the couple said they thought someone had jumped,” she said. “They walked up to the edge of the bridge and saw the paramedics all around, and they saw Colby.”
She’s still his mother, and her voice changes inflection anytime Colby’s name enters the conversation. And Gwen is not going to stop scrambling with her collected puzzle pieces, and that’s because, in her opinion, two-plus-two doesn’t add up. The conversation with Cremeans, however, helped.
“He said that he saw that I messaged him, but at that time he didn’t feel he had any useful information, but after seeing the story on LEDE, he decided to get back to me and at least tell me what he saw,” Wood reported. “He told me a lot of things that the authorities haven’t even told us, and he told us the exact position of the car, and that’s not something anyone had told us.
“We were also told that Colby’s car was running, but it wasn’t. He also told me that the couple that was walking across seemed a little too calm for people who said they had just seen someone jump off that bridge,” she continued. “And he told me that he and his wife talked about the whole situation when they got home, and that they agreed that something just didn’t seem right.
“I hope and pray he’s not the only one who sees these stories and decides to step up and contact me, and I thank God people in Huntington are reading, too.”
(Photos provided by Shelby Brown)
Related: Suicide? No Way – Part 1
