ST. LOUIS, Missouri — Cpt. Will Brown did not die the way they show it in the movies.
There was no gunshot, no screeching tires, no last radio call. He drove home from work one June afternoon, sat in his car for twenty minutes because he couldn’t quite make it inside, told his wife he was okay, drank some water, and went downstairs to take a nap. He did not come back up.
He was 55 years old. He had given thirty years to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. He had a scrapbook full of letters from people saying they needed more cops like him. He had four kids, 11 grandchildren, and a doctorate he was working on. He grew up in north city’s Walnut Park neighborhood. That’s where his mother still lived, where he had grown up, where a tornado had just torn through everything familiar to him, and where he had spent his final weeks standing in the wreckage making sure his officers kept going…