Mom speaks for injured trooper

LADSON — Mattie Brown tries to describe how it felt to see her only son in the hospital bed, the state trooper uniform cut away, his bandaged left arm shattered by a .45 slug. She can’t speak. She puts her hand softly to her lips, shaking her head, blinking back tears.

“The first thing he said was, ‘Momma, you all right?’” she almost whispers.

Highway Patrol Cpl. Quincy Mitchell “Mitch” Brown is out of surgery. The Ladson resident is beginning what’s expected to be seven or eight months of recovery before he can climb back in the patrol car. The arm has a rod in it now. His back has a huge welt from where the safety vest stopped one bullet. His hip is bruised from where the patrol radio stopped another.

The vest and radio may have saved his life.

On Sunday afternoon, the day after an Orangeburg County Sheriffs deputy was shot to death responding to a late night domestic violence call, Brown made a traffic stop. A passenger in the back seat opened fire.

The trooper’s father, Mitchell Brown, gets a little angry to think about it. He’s seen the videos of troopers manhandling suspects; he knows what people are saying about the Highway Patrol.

“A criminal gets mistreated, they flash that on the news quick. But these two officers who got shot over the weekend...there’s no justice. I guess they weren’t mistreated. And the guy who shot my son had the nerve to say he didn’t mean to hurt him,” Mitchell Brown said.

Read more in tomorrow’s edition of The Post and Courier.