Mother of Duquesne University student who fell to his death is still seeking answers

On Freedom Corner in the Hill District, Dannielle Brown sits, as she has for days, surrounded by photos of her late son and his bright smile.

She’s on a hunger strike as she pushes for answers and changes, both of which she’s been fighting for since her son’s death Oct. 4, 2018. He fell 16 stories from his Duquesne University dorm room, and the details of his death still don’t sit right with her. So she has pushed for — and received — the opportunity to go through the university’s police file on the incident herself.

Marquis Jaylen Brown, a running back on the Duquesne football team, died the same day he turned 21. His death has left Dannielle Brown with a sense that she is suffocating, and that feeling is what led her to pack her white, wooden rocking chair into her car July 4 and drive from her home in Washington, D.C., to Freedom Corner.

“I feel better not eating. I feel better sitting here. I feel better suffering,” she said, nearing week two of no food, though she is drinking fluids. “Suffering here is comforting compared to suffering at home and doing nothing.”

Dannielle Brown met with Duquesne officials July 7 but signed a nondisclosure agreement, she said. University officials revealed publicly two days later that they agreed to give Brown and her attorney, S. Lee Merritt, access to their police file and made available those who conducted the school’s independent investigation.

“Ms. Brown still has additional questions about the circumstances of her son’s death,” the Duquesne statement noted, adding they would make their police file available for Brown and Merritt.

A spokesman said university officials offered to ask Pittsburgh police to do the same.

A police spokesman said city police have already met with Brown and her family to review their file and will do so again if asked.

Dannielle Brown said access to the police files isn’t enough. She wants her own third-party investigator to have access to the actual evidence, such as witnesses and the scene.

“They still don’t get it,” she said.

Danielle Brown, mother of Marquis Jaylen Brown, participates in a hunger strike at Freedom Corner in the Hill District on July 15, 2020. (Nate Smallwood | Tribune-Review)

The details Brown does have, paired with reports by the university and Pittsburgh police, seem to paint Marquis Brown’s last hours as relatively uneventful. In its first official retelling of that night — which lines up with what Brown said she has been told — university officials said Marquis Brown spent the evening playing video games with a friend in an off-campus apartment.

He reportedly smoked marijuana with the friend, and an autopsy later revealed the drug in his system.

In a statement released Wednesday, Duquesne officials said that one person who was with Brown said it seemed like “a switch had flipped.” Brown got back to his dorm at Brottier Hall about 10 p.m., and officials said his roommate reported he came in “as though someone had been chasing him” and “began knocking over furniture in his room and slamming against the walls.”

Others on the 16^th floor called campus security, and two Duquesne police officers responded, according to the statement.

The statement continued: “Brown left the room and went into the hallways. He was described as skipping and throwing his hands in the air. When Brown returned from his second trip down the hall, he entered his room. One of the officers encouraged Brown to stay calm and to sit down, while another officer was in the main room but talking to the roommate near the doorway to his bedroom.”

As officers talked to Brown, he “shocked the officers by suddenly grabbing a chair, breaking the window, and diving out without time for anyone to stop him,” officials said.

An officer said he tried to grab at Brown as he went out the window, according to the statement. Officials wrote that officers had tried to deescalate the situation during the 10 minutes it unfolded. They said no force or threat of force was used, and Brown’s roommate’s retelling of the incident matched that of the officers. Officials also noted that both university police officers — retired municipal officers — are Black.

Pittsburgh police investigated and closed the case in February 2019. The medical examiner ruled Brown’s cause of death as trauma from the fall and the manner of death as undetermined.

If Dannielle Brown’s third-party investigator’s findings are the same as those of the university and Pittsburgh police, she said, so be it.

“If what happened looks like what the school report is and what the Pittsburgh police report is … then guess what? I can go and move on with that,” she said.

Pictures of Marquis Jaylen Brown are seen at Freedom Corner in the Hill District where is mother, Danielle Brown, is staging a hunger strike on July 9, 2020. (Nate Smallwood | Tribune-Review)

Brown said she also wants to see university officers, who are armed, be equipped with body-worn cameras — not just at Duquesne but at all colleges and universities. She wants to see more training on how to deal with students who might be in crisis.

“My son was in and out of the dorm room. He was up and down the halls,” she said. “It’s obvious he’s having a mental health situation.”

Brown said her son never showed signs of depression or any other mental health issue.

Brown said she will sit and rock on Freedom Corner until those things happen. A group of supporters have rallied around her. After three nights sleeping in her rocking chair and on a sleeping mat she picked up on the drive north, someone brought her a tent. Others came and brought their own tents, camping alongside her.

She said even though she felt propelled to Freedom Corner from within, there’s neither closure nor healing in the rocking chair.

“Closure and healing,” she said, “come when I leave this life and join back with my baby.”