A Joseph City family is experiencing every parent’s worst nightmare and asking for the public’s help to bring their son home. On the morning of Tuesday, July 4, 16-year-old Jarrett Brooks walked away from his home and has disappeared without a trace.
According to his father and mother, Brian and Laura Brooks, Jarrett is an exceptionally kind and loving boy, he’s also an explorer for the Joseph City Fire District. “This whole thing is just so shocking, so uncharacteristic and unexpected. He’s a good kid. You ask anybody, he’s a happy go-lucky kid and he’s never been in any trouble,” said Brian. “He works for several of the ranchers around here branding, gathering cows and doing whatever they need.” Jarrett, who is homeschooled by his mom, is the third of seven children in the Brooks family and the oldest one at home at this time.
According to Brian, they believe it all began on the night of Monday, July 3. Earlier that day, Jarrett had taken his dad’s hunting vehicle out off-roading and had damaged it. “He’d been told numerous times, it’s not yours to break because if you break it, you can’t afford to fix it. But he took it off road Monday and he broke it, so I told him he was grounded.” This transpired around between 9 and 10 p.m. that evening and then Jarrett went to his bedroom for the night. But before going to bed his mom took his phone from him, as they do with all their children every night.
The following morning on Tuesday, Laura had woken her daughters up early in order to take part in the town’s 4th of July parade and festivities. Brian explained, “Jarrett woke up and asked her if he was just grounded from driving or grounded altogether and she said, ‘you’re grounded altogether.’ So, he said ‘does that mean I can’t have my phone and I can’t go to the 4th of July stuff?’ and she confirmed that was correct.”
Following that interaction, Jarrett returned to his room. Laura went to take a shower and when she came out, he was nowhere to be found. This was at approximately 7 a.m.
At first Brian and Laura weren’t too concerned. Their home is in a very rural area on the northwest side of Joseph City and they figured he was just walking about nearby, perhaps blowing off some steam after realizing he was grounded for the day. But then he didn’t return.
Brian said, “She’s (Laura) a concerned mom so when she can’t find him, she starts calling around to his friends but no one has seen him.” They then took separate vehicles and began driving around the neighborhood to see if they could find him but he was nowhere to be found. By 12 p.m. Laura posted on Facebook, asking if anyone had seen Jarrett in town but when no one had, they contacted the Navajo County Sheriff’s Office by 12:30 p.m. and not long after that Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS) troopers and sheriff’s deputies arrived and began canvassing the area looking for him.
Brian is with the Joseph City Fire District and has been part of its search and rescue team for many years. He’s very familiar with the process of looking for missing people but never before had he had to apply that knowledge to a member of his own family. But after learning from law enforcement that a neighbor had seen a boy matching Jarrett’s description walking through his pasture carrying a gun at about 7 a.m., concern began to turn to fear. Brian said at that moment the biggest question was, was he going out there to self-harm. “You had that initial reaction. I mean, he’s headed off to the middle of nowhere and he has a gun on him.” With that information, the Arizona Rangers sent a helicopter to help with the search and the Department of Corrections sent out their tracking dogs to try to locate a scent. The dogs picked up a scent on the west end of town, but it didn’t lead anywhere.
On Wednesday, the members of the Joseph City Fire District, the CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) team and other qualified searchers came together and conducted a grid search of the area but came up empty-handed.
Although the search had been officially called off community members stepped up in droves, eager to lend a hand using horses, dirt bikes even going door-to-door asking if anyone had seen Jarrett. But all to no avail and by Thursday, Brian and Laura felt certain that Jarrett was not in the area.
By then, NCSO had taken over the investigation and a family friend had established a Facebook page, Search for Jarrett Brooks, asking for the public’s assistance in locating Jarrett and to spread the word. But even as hundreds of tips and suggestions poured in, nothing yielded any clues as to why this seemingly happy boy walked away from his home.
It wasn’t until Friday that Brian was able to talk directly to the neighbor who had told law enforcement that he had spotted Jarrett walking across the pasture. The man explained that he was working on his property with a friend when they spotted Jarrett striding across his pasture with a gun. Jarrett had gone under a fence by the frontage road and was walking back and forth so he and his friend decided to go and see what was going on. He went back to his home, got into his side-by-side vehicle and the man he was with got his truck and they took the roads surrounding the property from opposite directions in order to come around and catch up to the boy to find out what he was doing there. But by the time they met up, Jarrett had disappeared. No more than 10 minutes had passed. “Right there, I knew that he had gotten a ride out of there,” stated Brian. “We didn’t get that information from the Sheriff’s Office; from them we were told he had crossed the road. Now we know he had help.”
But who had helped Jarrett was a complete unknown. Laura had already gone through his phone, social media and all of his electronics looking for clues. “Not just his phone but his computer, his tablet. I went through records from every phone in this house. Phone calls, text messages, search history,” said Laura. But nothing in any of his interactions provided a single clue. After receiving several tips that Jarrett was spotted in Winslow, they suspect that’s where he was taken but it’s still not certain.
“We don’t understand it. He didn’t have any attitude. He isn’t struggling. He didn’t have temper tantrums or any anger issues. He didn’t seem depressed at all, there’s nothing,” said Brian.
Laura struggled to compose herself, saying, “He’s a 16-year-old kid and when he leaves the house he still comes and gives me a kiss and a hug, says ‘love you mom, I’ll be right back.’ Sixteen-year-old kids just don’t do that. He does that every time. Every time.”
Brian says the unknown now is how did he communicate and who picked him up. They don’t think he had another phone but they don’t know how he would’ve been able to contact someone to pick him up without one. “He didn’t have hours to plan. He literally went to bed. When he left, he took his wallet, a gun and a pocket knife. He doesn’t have a bank account and he really didn’t have any money in his wallet. But Laura had cash in her wallet and I had cash in my drawer, he knows it and he didn’t touch any of it,” said Brian. “He either took the gun for protection or he took it to sell. It was such a small window of time.”
Brian stated that a video camera in the room where his guns are stored showed Jarrett entering the room that first morning, taking the gun out of the safe and checking to ensure it was loaded. His face was clearly seen and there was no sign that he was upset or angry. Brian said he’s never taken a gun without first asking permission.
Laura noted something else that was unusual. For seven months, Jarrett had hounded them to get him a pup, which he finally got. “Six weeks after he gets this dog that he’s wanted forever, and he leaves him behind? I just can’t believe he’d do that.”
Brian said he hasn’t heard from NCSO since their investigation began and finds it frustrating because despite being a juvenile, he feels it’s being treated as if he’s an adult. “The thought is he left on his own accord and he left with a gun. He’s a runaway that doesn’t want to be found.” He believes the gun has kept certain resources such as the Navajo County Sheriff’s Posse from being utilized out of safety concerns. He noted, that the National Center for Missing and Endangered Children won’t do anything because he left with a gun and an Amber Alert also hasn’t been issued because he’s considered a runaway, not missing and endangered. He says that the resources he was able to obtain were through his own connections with law enforcement.
What both Brian and Laura are asking from the public is to be vigilant and if someone believes they’ve seen Jarrett, take a photo and send it to them on Facebook Messenger on the Search for Jarrett Facebook page along with when and where he was seen. There is also an option to leave an anonymous post on the page for anyone who may have information or may have helped Jarrett leave but doesn’t want to be known.
“We just want him home. We love him, we miss him,” said both Brian and Laura, breaking down. “He’s not in trouble. Whatever he did to the truck is $100 at best. His dog misses him, his family misses him, his friends miss him. Nobody wants to be without him, he’s such a good kid.”
Another option for providing anonymous information is through the Navajo County Sheriff’s Office app that can be downloaded from the app store at no cost. When contacted for an update on the investigation, the NCSO public information officer stated that no information would be released at this time.
