It has been nearly 50 days since Dannielle Brown drove from Washington D.C. to Pittsburgh and began her hunger strike protest against Duquesne University in hopes of receiving answers about her son's death.

Dannielle has been sitting in a rocking chair at Freedom Corner since July 4 in honor of her son Marquis Jaylen Brown, who died on Oct. 4, 2018, when, according to police, he jumped out of his 16th-floor dorm window. Marquis, a junior at the school and running back on the football team, turned 21 the day before he died.

Since her son's passing, Dannielle has been in a battle with Duquesne for more information about what happened that night. She says she was left out of both the school's and police department's investigations, which she told news outlets was strange considering the mental health implications the school relayed to her. 

She expected someone would speak to her about Marquis' mental health history, but no one ever contacted her before the investigations were closed.

“When I think about an independent investigation, it means you are going to talk to the kid’s mother, who knows things about their child, their behavior, what they would and wouldn’t do, whether they had a history of mental health issues or not. That was not simply done in my son’s case,” she said to The Washington Post. 

The investigations revealed two Black Duquesne public safety officers, a campus security guard and a student resident assistant were in the room when Marquis threw a chair through the window and jumped to his death that night.

The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police report stated Marquis "visited a friend’s off-campus apartment on the night of his death. He returned to his dorm/apartment on the 16th floor of Brottier Hall around 10 p.m. According to surveillance video and multiple witness statements, Brown acted erratically in the elevator, in the 16th-floor dorm hallway, and in his dorm room. As a result of his behavior, students called 911."

The university officers responded after other students reported hearing a fight between Marquis and his roommate. When the officers arrived, they said there was not a fight but that Marquis' roommate was trying to help him calm down. 

On a GoFundMe campaign in support of Marquis, Dannielle explained that for months, police in Pittsburgh refused to give her any information on the case.

"They want us to believe that a young man who had everything to live for suddenly decided to jump out of a 16 story window because of a consumed substance and they closed the case.  This is not the reason Jaylen fell to his death — so a grieving mother has to wait even longer to try to understand this senseless tragedy of her son," she said.

The Duquesne report, which was done by the law firm of Reed Smith LLP, has more details about what investigators believe may have happened that night. The law firm spoke with people who were with Marquis that night, his roommate, the two Duquesne officers, a security officer and a resident assistant. 

The university's version of events said Marquis was celebrating his birthday and came back to his dorm dazed and confused. He was running up the hall and was knocking things over, according to the university's report.

When the campus officers arrived, they learned there was no fight happening and remained in Marquis' dorm room to speak to him and his roommate. Both the school and police reports mention that Marquis smoked marijuana that night.

"Brown left the room and went into the hallway. He was described as skipping and throwing his hands in the air. When Brown returned from his second trip down the hall, he entered the 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," the university report said.    

"As the DU Public Safety Officers were talking with Brown, Brown shocked the officers by suddenly grabbing a chair, breaking the window, and diving out without time for anyone to stop him," the report continues.

The school said in its statement that it offered Dannielle the chance to look over the police file and asked Pittsburgh police to give her lawyers access to the entire file on Marquis' death. 

But after a July 7 meeting with university officials, Dannielle was even more incensed, saying her anguish was largely being ignored by school officials who refused to answer her most pertinent questions, according to the New Pittsburgh Courier. The mother said she was required to sign a nondisclosure agreement and was not given any new information, reports The Post.

Dannielle, who has a bachelor’s degree from Howard University and a master’s degree in counseling and psychology, has said she is after three basic things: an independent report, for Duquesne officers to be equipped with body cameras and mental health crisis training for university police. She also wants to know how close the officers were to her son when he jumped and how it was possible for him to shatter a window and jump through it so quickly. 

In July, Dannielle spoke candidly with Pittsburgh's NPR station WESA about the university investigation. 

“I looked at the independent investigation as some type of risk management that will benefit Duquesne. If I wasn’t contacted to get my viewpoint … then it’s not an independent investigation. It’s a self-serving investigation,” she said. 

“There’s no way that a parent should send their kid to college and they come back in a casket," she added.

She recently held a 300-person protest in Marquis' honor, hoping to pressure the school into letting investigators take another look at the case. Dannielle is also disputing the school's financial settlement offer, according to The Undefeated. 


Lee Merritt, her former attorney, spoke to The Undefeated about her demands. 

“Ms. Brown has the strongly held belief that, but for the negligence and or misconduct of the responding officers for Duquesne University, her son would be alive. The university believes that they’ve done all they could, and this was an unfortunate incident that was sparked by a bad reaction to an illegal substance," he said. 

“Even if it did happen the way they claim, No. 1, they should have had body cameras. No. 2, they should have been able to assess that this kid was in some sort of crisis and needed help. And they had more than enough officers to prevent what happened next,” he added.

Dannielle wants private investigators to interview all of the witnesses again and look over the initial statements for more clues about what led to her son's death. 

“You know that slogan, ‘I can’t breathe’ — well, for a lot of us mothers who lost children under questionable circumstances, we’re suffocating. No answers, not having our children with us, we can’t breathe. We’re physically functioning but can’t breathe. So I knew I had to do something,” Dannielle told The Undefeated. 

“I miss him so much. But that’s why I have to do what I have to do,” she said at the recent protest in front of the building where her son died. 

Dannielle-BrownDuquesne UniversityMarquis-Jaylen-Brown