The story began on the evening of July 11 and spilled over into the early morning hours of July 12. Brewer, a deputy with the sheriff’s department in Grand County, Utah, and his wife, Logan, invited his father to their home for drinks. The elder Brewer, Wesley “Corky” Brewer, was the fire chief in Moab and director of emergency management for Grand County. TJ was one of several law enforcement officers in the extended Brewer family, which includes multiple police officers and local sheriff’s deputies.
TJ would later tell officers that after dinner, which he cooked, his wife went upstairs to put one of their children to bed. Soon afterward, he realized he was alone in the house “when the kid she put to bed came down stairs,” according to police reports.
“He went up to check on where his wife was,” one officer recounted in the reports. “He stated that when he opened the door to his son’s room, he saw his wife on top of his dad” having sex.
The sight of his father having sex with his wife allegedly sent TJ into a rage. He “beat the ****” out of his dad, he later told police. Logan, TJ’s wife, told police later that night that TJ had hit her and “pistol whipped” his father with one of multiple guns he kept in his home. She also allegedly said all three of them had been drinking. The officer’s account of his interview with Logan does not specifically address the claim that she and Corky were having sex. Corky’s injuries prevented him from speaking to officers that night, the records show.
Somehow, after the alleged confrontation in the bedroom at TJ’s home, all three participants managed to leave the residence. Logan went to her parents’ house. In his incident report, Moab Police Officer Shaun Hansen said Corky, the father, returned to his own home where he was “apparently looking for a firearm.”
“His wife, Cindy Brewer, denied him access to a firearm,” Hansen wrote in his report. “Corky then grabbed a butcher knife and stabbed himself two times, puncturing a lung and slicing his liver.”
Corky was initially taken to Moab Regional Hospital. According to the police, when TJ learned his father was hospitalized, he headed to the hospital to kill him.
What ensued was a dramatic confrontation in the hospital parking lot. TJ was initially confronted by his uncle, Curt Brewer, who is also a sheriff’s deputy. When police arrived at the hospital, they found TJ fighting with Curt outside the hospital. TJ was not wearing a shirt or shoes, was screaming, and in the words of one officer, “had the odor of an alcoholic beverage on his breath as he spoke.”
“He stated several times that he wanted to kill his dad, that he wanted his gun to ‘finish the job,’” one officer wrote in his report.
Officers continued to try to subdue TJ, who remained belligerent.
“TJ made numerous remarks to each officer and deputy that arrived, about all of us being stupid, dumb asses, and at one point stated we needed to call someone with a brain to come and talk with him,” the officer wrote.
TJ was taken into custody without further incident, but for the next three weeks the dramatic serious of confrontations, including the public standoff in the hospital parking lot, remained unreported.
