Man ID’d in downtown Vancouver homicide

Brookes was well known among the people who worked near Pacific Bullion Precious Metals, said Yvonne Mitchell, whose shop, Vantucky Vintage, is across the street. She called his death heartbreaking.

“He was such a gregarious, outgoing person,” she said.

He was a successful, smart and fun man, she said, and a good husband; he kept a photo of himself with his wife front-and-center in the shop.

Brookes told The Columbian in 1995 when he was running for Vancouver City Council, that he was born in Anchorage, Alaska, and grew up in Northern California. He spent ninth grade in Vancouver and graduated from high school in Frankfurt, Germany.

He went to Clark College and studied accounting at Western Business College in Portland.

In 2013, he was one of more than 100 Clark County residents to run for a position on the freeholder board, a group of citizens tasked with rewriting the rules of county government. He was not elected to the Vancouver City Council or the board of freeholders.

The precious metals shop he worked in was established in 2014. It specializes in buying and selling gold coins and bullion, as well as gemstones and jewelry.

Mitchell said there’s a camaraderie among the businesses around that intersection of Main and East Seventh streets — which include a pawn shop and her store — and Brookes was key to that.

“He’d be bored and just go in and out of our stores,” she said.

Mitchell said her shop has been broken into before. She pointed to the Lucky Loan pawn shop across the street, and the metal bars over its windows.

“When you buy and sell gold and silver, people can be desperate for money,” she said.

Stevie Mathieu contributed to this story.