Brown

By Alyssa Schnugg
Senior reporter
A man charged in the death of a 1-year-old child last year will serve another seven years in
prison following a plea agreement that reduced his charge from capital murder to
manslaughter.
Matthew Zachery Brown was arrested in March 2024 and initially charged with capital murder
while engaged in felony child abuse after a child in his care died at Le Bonheur Children’s
Hospital in Memphis.
On April 30, the charge was reduced to manslaughter, and Brown pleaded guilty. He was
sentenced to 20 years in prison, with 12 years suspended. With one year of credit for time
already served, he will serve an additional seven years.
After his release, he will be on supervised probation for seven years, followed by five years of
unsupervised probation. If he violates probation at any point, he could be required to serve
the remaining 12 years.
The case began on March 22, 2024, when the Lafayette County Sheriff’s Office responded to
County Road 520 in Como after a 911 call reported an unresponsive child.
According to court records, the child had been dropped off with Brown by the child’s mother
on March 19. The child was not related to Brown.
Brown told investigators that the baby hit his head while on a porch swing on March 21 and
sustained a bruise under the left eye. He said he placed the child in front of the television, and
when he returned, the child was unresponsive.
At the time, Brown was also caring for his two sons, ages 2 and 4.
The child was taken to Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi and later flown to Le
Bonheur Children’s Hospital, where he died.
According to a report from the hospital’s CARES Team, the baby had bruises on his face,
stomach, back, legs, buttocks, chest, forehead, and both sides of his head, along with an
internal brain injury. The child suffered subdural hemorrhaging—a serious condition involving
bleeding between the skull and the surface of the brain, typically caused by a head injury.
The report concluded that the head trauma was “nonaccidental” and noted that a child with
such an injury would not have been able to eat, sit up, or play and would have become
unresponsive shortly after the injury occurred. The bruises were found to be at various stages
of healing and could not be precisely dated.