Victims in murder-suicide at Hopkins daycare identified
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Friends, family and the Hopkins community are mourning the deaths of daycare operator Kristen Ann Brown and her 7-year-old daughter, Evie.
Police suspect Nathan Matthew Brown, the victims’ husband and father, of killing them Wednesday morning in a murder-suicide. Nathan Brown was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. All three were named in a search warrant unsealed Thursday. They died inside the daycare the family operated out of their Hopkins home.
In a Facebook post, Kristen Brown said she opened Brown Bear Daycare after having Evie in October 2018. She said her passion for caring for children began early on, when she babysat for neighbors and worked in her mother’s child care center in rural South Dakota.
“No matter what other jobs I held, I always wound up back working with kids,” she wrote.
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According to the post, Kristen Brown graduated from the University of Minnesota, where she majored in elementary education foundations and minored in speech-language-hearing sciences.
“I plan to take all the skills that I have learned in my journey and use them to help my daughter and those children (who will hopefully become lifelong friends) blossom into happy, intelligent, caring individuals,” she wrote, referring to the children her daycare would go on to serve.
Other posts on the page show a woman not only dedicated to the science of childhood development, but also to kindness and curiosity. Multiple Veterans Day posts show children’s art projects thanking veterans. There are photos of kids on field trips to museums. Two of her posts share a video from the web series Kid President telling the story of Martin Luther King Jr., with captions urging people to love one another.
“In this time when people are so scared and showing so much hatred to each other, I would like to spread the love around,” she wrote in March of last year. “Sometimes we can learn so much from children.”
According to the search warrant, a father who was dropping his children off at the daycare and witnessed the crime told officers that Kristen Brown was closing the daycare “due to relationship issues with Nathan.”
Police said the death of a 78-year-old close relative in Burnsville is related to the Hopkins killings, and that Nathan Brown had been living at that residence.
The Hopkins search warrant does not name that victim. Multiple outlets report her name was Alice, and MPR News partner KARE 11 reports that neighbors described her as a gardener who loved to walk.
Hopkins Mayor Patrick Hanlon said a vigil is being planned, but has not yet released details.
“There's no strangers in Hopkins, and when the time is right we are planning a vigil to commemorate the lives of the folks that were lost,” he said. “They were members of our community, and in Hopkins they are members of our family.”
A 24-hour statewide sexual violence and domestic violence hotline is available in Minnesota. You can call Minnesota Day One at (866) 223-1111 or text (612) 399-9995 to connect to resources closest to where you live.
