CPSO Officer Confirms Own Brother as One Perpetrator of Wilkinson County "Zombie Attack"
Posted August 10, 2011 2:44PM CDT
CONCORDIA PARISH, LA (KBUD , Amanda Broussard) An officer at the Concordia Parish Sheriff's Department, twenty-nine year old Joshua Brooks, received a devastating telephone call on Sunday night, August 7th. Officer Brooks had just fed and rocked his newborn son to sleep and was bringing a glass of ice-water up to his wife when the phone rang, around 10:45 PM that night.
"I was worried. Nobody ever calls us that late. Me and Sean always talk on Tuesday or Wednesday nights, so he was the farthest possibility from my mind. My first thought was that something was wrong with my parents or my mother-in-law, but when I saw the caller ID I knew it had to be about him."
Officer Brooks knew because his brother - Sean Brooks, age thirty-two - has been living in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, just over the state line, for seven years. The number he mentioned on the caller ID was from Wilkinson County General Hospital.
"My heart just sank when I saw it. My brother's young. He's healthy. He's a math teacher, ya know, so... Well, when I saw it was from the hospital, I knew something had to be bad wrong,"
Officer Brooks says that instead of a doctor or other hospital employee, the person calling from the hospital was a fellow police officer. "He said his name was Sgt. Rudd and that my brother had me listed as his emergency contact. He said he just needed me to get down there. He wouldn't tell me what had happened or if my brother was even dead or alive. I figured he must have been in a bad car accident or something. I got off the phone, told Millie where I was going, and sped all the way there."
When he arrived at the hospital, Officer Brooks says that Sgt. Rudd was waiting for him outside the emergency department doors. "I don't know if he'd been standing there the whole time it took me to make the drive or if he just happened to step out at the right moment, but as soon as I saw his face I knew it was even worse than I was thinking. He was white as a ghost, just looking downright sick. When I walked up to him, he knew right away who I was, and he just put his hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eyes and -"
Officer Brooks's emotions get better of him at this point in the interview, and even though he is clearly a strong, courageous officer of the law, he breaks down into heartfelt tears right before my eyes. Hearing his voice break as I play the tape to write this, my own eyes tear up all over again. I give him some time, but eventually I have to ask him to finish his story.
Ever courageous, he continues. "The guy just looks at me and finally he says, 'Two of my officers that were on patrol together responded to a call from the management at the Pine Border Motel.' I'm not going to go into all the details exactly to protect my brother's privacy, but what he basically told me was that Sean and a young lady had spent the night together in a motel room and... well, something went wrong."
A curious situation. An emotional Officer Brooks goes on to describe a nightmare he seems barely able to repeat. The police officer who met him at the hospital is Sergeant Will Rudd. Here's what he had to say about the scene, from the inside:
"We received a call about what sounded like a possible domestic dispute between a male and a female at the Pine Border Motel. The call was placed by management, who claimed that occupants in the rooms on either side of Mr. Brooks's had both called the desk to report the noise. By the time my guys got there, a little crowd had formed. The male occupant, Mr. Brooks, was unresponsive at the scene. The female was nowhere to be found, but the other occupants reported having seen her earlier in the evening, when she and Mr. Brooks apparently went out for a while. No one witnessed the alleged dispute, and no one saw what had left Mr. Brooks in that condition. One of the occupants had stepped out for a smoke when the ruckus quieted down, and she saw him there on the ground and let out a scream that got a crowd started.
"The officers on the scene radioed an ambulance, and then called in to report to me. Given the nature of recent attacks in other parts of the country, I wanted to be there at the hospital, see it for myself. He was tore up something awful. It was bad. Real bad. Bite marks all over him. He never really regained consciousness, or it didn't seem like, at least.
"We waited and waited, hoping he'd wake up by the time his brother got there. It was about six hours later when he attacked the doctor. I'm not at liberty to discuss all this in full detail, of course. He turned very aggressive and unfortunately didn't survive his injuries. They'd just pronounced him dead and I stepped out for some air and that's when I saw Officer Brooks. I knew it was him right off. Looked just like his brother. It was real hard having to tell him about it, and having to ask him to identify his brother's body. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends now."
[Amanda] - "Was there any indication that the victim had been using drugs such as Bath Salts, which have been presumed responsible for attacks in other parts of the country and now the world?"
[Sgt. Rudd] - "At this point in the investigation - and we're pretty well past toxicology and searches - there's no indication of drug use of any kind in the victim. That does not mean the woman we presume to be his attacker wasn't using them, though. We just didn't find any evidence she was, and toxicology reports from the hospital prove that Mr. Brooks was absolutely clean. We are looking for this woman now. We believe her name is Marcella Birch, black hair, hazel eyes, Caucasian, female, approximately thirty years old. We're working on a photo to circulate to the, uh, press, but she didn't have a picture ID in the purse we found so all that's off her credit cards and the descriptions given by witnesses at the scene. We've impounded the vehicle she left at the motel, and that vehicle was also registered to the name Marcella Birch."
[Amanda] - "Is Marcella Birch to be considered dangerous? What should readers do if they encounter Ms. Birch?"
[Sgt. Rudd] – (after a long pause) "Yes, yes, we're considering her dangerous. If you think you see her, just call in her location and we'll take it from there. Do not approach her or attempt to make contact."
Officer Brooks didn't know, or wouldn't say, any more than Sgt. Rudd. No employees from Wilkinson County General Hospital would agree to give me an interview. They're all very tight-lipped about the incident.
As a human being, I am afraid to pose the question that, as a reporter, I feel I am obligated now to ask: Does the absence of drugs on the scene give credence to Dr. Evan Frasier's recently proposed hypothesis - dubbed by some doctors, politicians, and news outlets "The Frasier Fallacy" or "Frasier's Folly" - that the drugs, the "bath salts", were merely a catalyst to jump-start the spread of a bacteria or virus that leads to the violent outbursts we've heard more and more about since they began in January of this year?
All this reporter can say is that the comfortable wall of distance between we in the deep South and these deranged biting attacks seems to be starting to crumble. I, for one, think it's time we sought answers.
Mo tapped the ashes off her joint. There was no such thing as good news lately. She'd started following the stories when the first incident had taken place in Chicago, back in January. She'd considered using it as fodder for her Freshman Psych term paper. The professor was a known zombiephile, and Mo thought it might be amusing to consider the possibility that the current pop-culture zombie craze was beginning to affect people.
Of course, she was fairly sure it was the drugs. Amanda Broussard was one of the better podunk reporters from this factory-driven hick town, but she was still a podunk reporter from this factory-driven hick town, after all. That Frasier guy might be onto something, but Mo wasn't even ready to start contemplating that end of things yet. This attack was by far the closest to home, but the overall number of bite attacks had gone down the past couple of months. She wasn't going to let it spoil her Zen. She slipped out of her pajamas, laid them across her footboard, and climbed into bed.
Seventeen miles from Mo's house, Ciji Metoyer had just read the same article (sans joint). Amanda Broussard was her favorite local journalist and reporter, and she wanted to observe the best in hopes that someday she could be amongst them.
After, she read a story about an eighty year old woman from the area who had been walking 4 miles of highway every day for 15 years to collect recyclables. She'd been using the meager payback to keep her water bill up. "These litter bugs have been keeping my water on for FIFTEEN YEARS!" Ciji gave a giggle.
She settled into her bed and turned on Anderson Cooper with her journal (a worn, half-full composition notebook) and pen in front of her on the mattress. During commercials she wrote her musings about the old woman and about what she'd done that day, and two sentences about Amanda Broussard's article: "There was a bite attack in Mississippi, somewhere near the border. Broussard wrote a really great article about it." Underneath she absently drew a little doodle of herself wearing a visor, hunched over a typewriter on a very-cluttered desk with a laptop to one side and a ringing phone to the other, and a camera hanging from her neck on a lanyard until she fell asleep.