“He didn’t ever express any kind of extreme sad feelings. In fact, he was very funny, very upbeat. He had a career path that he was excited about,” Janelle tells PEOPLE of her son, six months after his death by suicide
When Janelle Brown and Kody Brown’s son Garrison died suddenly in March, she and the rest of the world were left in shock.
Speaking exclusively with PEOPLE, the Sister Wives star, 55, opens up about that devastating day and why she was blindsided by Garrison’s heartbreaking death by suicide at 25.
“We just had no idea that he was in that place,” Janelle, 55, tells PEOPLE, adding that “substance abuse” likely played a role in his state of mind before his death. “But he didn’t ever express any kind of extreme sad feelings.”
“In fact, he was very funny, very upbeat,” she adds. “He had a career path that he was excited about. He had a life, he had friends.”
On March 5, Garrison was found dead in his home in Arizona. At the time, Lieutenant Charles M. Hernandez II of the Flagstaff Police Department told PEOPLE that officers responded to a report of a death inside a home and confirmed that Garrison’s brother Gabriel, 22, had “discovered Mr. Brown deceased.” Officials later ruled his manner of death as a suicide.