Sharon George can still picture her godson Bryan Brown sleeping soundly in her Blakely home, sneaking behind her to give her a giant hug, or simply ending a call with “I love you.”
While they weren’t technically family, both considered each other so. They established a strong bond through shared experiences over two decades, which she looks back on as fond memories.
“If he hurt, I hurt. If he were happy, I was happy. Nobody could tell me that wasn’t my son, because we bonded like that over the years,” George said. “I still look at old messages and call his number hoping I can hear a voicemail. I would give anything to hear him tell me again that he loves me — and I love him.”
George heard “I love you” from Brown for the last time Feb. 9 when he called to ask how everything was at work. The next morning, the 38-year-old photographer was dead.
His body was found inside a vehicle at a Wells Fargo near College Park, according to South Fulton police. Officers responded around 9:40 a.m. to the bank on Old Bill Cook Road and found Brown shot inside a vehicle in the parking lot. Police are investigating the shooting as a homicide, though no suspects have been publicly identified.
“He will be missed. He’s already missed. There’s not a day that I haven’t cried, nor my daughter,” George added.
Both George and her daughter, Alicia “Lisa” George, 36, were at home in Blakely grieving the loss of Brown when The Atlanta Journal-Constitution spoke with them a week ago. However, they received more shocking news this week when Brown’s 18-year-old son was announced as a suspect in the shooting death of a teenage girl Tuesday at an apartment in Peachtree City.
“This is shocking and difficult to process at this moment,” Sharon George said via text Thursday. “Unbelievable.”
Jacobean Brown is one of three teenage boys accused of killing 15-year-old Whitewater High School student Madison Gesswein, who was found by her mother in her bed with an apparent gunshot wound to the head. Brown, Justus Smith and Yeshua Mathis are all facing a murder charge.
The law enforcement agencies investigating the two cases are aware of the link, but it is not known if they are related.
Sharon and Lisa George weren’t composed enough Thursday to go into details about Jacobean Brown after hearing news of his arrest. They were already trying to make sense of his father’s death.
Bryan Brown spent his whole adult life helping others and trying to brighten their world, Sharon said. He didn’t have enemies, always had a smile on his face, and would routinely encourage others by saying things like “we’re not giving up” and “you can do it,” she said. That positivity gave her energy and life that she didn’t even know she had.
Credit: Sharon George
Credit: Sharon George
“That’s who he was. He was love. He was positive. He was kindness. He was giving, he just was all that,” Sharon said. “And that’s why we are so devastated and hurt because who would take such a beautiful soul like that for no reason? It was just senseless.”
Lisa and Bryan were friends for more than 25 years. They met in their southwest Georgia school cafeteria in seventh grade and were inseparable ever since. During that first encounter in the late 1990s, Lisa remarked how Bryan, who always had a great sense of humor, skipped the lunch line and started joking with a female classmate next to her in line. After Lisa asked Bryan what he said, she said he replied, “Man, she is just so pretty.”
“From that moment, we clicked. We were insane. There was never another time in my life that he wasn’t there,” she said. “He’s the only guy that my mom just had allowed to spend a night, even school nights. That’s how my mom developed a close relationship as well, and he considered her as his godmother.”
Lisa saw Bryan grow into an adult with goals and aspirations. After stints in retail, he pursued his passion of photography and opened a studio in Atlanta. He most recently lived with his husband, Philippe Bertrand, in metro Atlanta, and was working on opening a second studio in Blakely.
Credit: Bryan Brown - Facebook
Credit: Bryan Brown - Facebook
Lisa and Bryan shared a special bond, especially considering he helped name two of her three daughters and was the godparent to one of them. Her eldest daughter, Paige, 15, was named after that classmate in the cafeteria when they first met. Bryan was also the godparent to George’s 12-year-old daughter Paris.
On Feb. 9, Lisa saw Bryan in person for the last time at a recreation basketball game in Blakely. Roughly three hours after the game ended, she got a final call from him as he was driving back to Atlanta. She was working out at the time and received some words of encouragement from her lifelong motivator: “He was like ‘go go go!’ and rooting me on,” she said.
The call lasted roughly 30 minutes. He was found dead about nine hours later.
South Fulton police Lt. Ronnie Wyatt said a possible connection between the two homicides was “eyebrow-raising” and a coincidence worth exploring. He said police will continue to work vigorously and will leave no “stone unturned.”
“I just feel like, you know, he didn’t deserve it,” Lisa said. “My heart is just so torn because he was full of love and life and he wasn’t the type of person that would harm someone. So for someone to do this to him, to rob them of his life like that, it hurts. It hurts really, really bad.”
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