Former NFL player Sergio Brown was arrested in Southern California in connection with the death of his mother, authorities said, as he tried to reenter the United States from Mexico just weeks after the 73-year-old woman was found slain behind her suburban Chicago home.
Brown, 35, was detained Tuesday afternoon and booked into San Diego County Jail without bail after a “fugitive arrest,” records show.
Brown agreed to be extradited to Illinois during a Wednesday court hearing, San Diego District Attorney’s office spokesperson Steve Walker told The Associated Press in an email.
Authorities in Illinois have until Nov. 13 to retrieve Brown, Walker said.
The exact charges against Brown were unclear, but a warrant for his arrest cited first-degree murder, according to a news release from Maywood, Illinois, police. The police department did not immediately return a call and email from AP to verify the charge.
Maywood police announced Wednesday that Brown was arrested after he attempted to reenter the United States from Mexico, WMAQ-TV reported.
The search for Brown began after Myrtle Brown’s body was found Sept. 16 near a creek in Maywood, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) west of Chicago. Relatives had told officers that they could not find Sergio Brown or Myrtle Brown.
A medical examiner ruled her death a homicide and determined that she had been injured during an assault.
After Myrtle Brown’s death, police began checking the authenticity of Instagram videos that appear to show Sergio Brown discussing her death. In a video posted Sept. 18 to an Instagram page that appeared to belong to Sergio Brown, a man resembling Brown calls reports about his mother’s death “fake news.”
“Fake news, fake news, fake news. It has to be the FBI,” the man says in the rambling, expletive-filled video, in which he says he thought his mother “was on vacation” in the Mexican state of Sinaloa.
In another video posted to his Instagram story, the man references the film “Finding Nemo,” repeating the movie’s famous line, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming,” the Chicago Tribune reported.
Sergio Brown, who graduated from Proviso East High School in Maywood, played college football for Notre Dame before his time in the NFL. He played defensive back from 2010 through 2016 for the New England Patriots, Indianapolis Colts, Jacksonville Jaguars and Buffalo Bills.