Brother of slain Charlotte eatery owner thanks mourners at vigil: ‘My heart’s broken.’
Hundreds of mourners packed the parking lot of Brooks’ Sandwich House in NoDa on Tuesday night for a candlelight vigil to remember co-owner Scott Brooks, who was shot and killed outside the longtime eatery before sunrise Monday.
“Guys, you don’t know how much this means to me,” Brooks’ brother, David Brooks, told the gathering. “My heart’s broken, but my spirit’s not broken. We are going to be back.”
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police said Wednesday that detectives are looking for two male suspects in the fatal shooting. Robbery was likely the motive, and the police are looking for additional help from the community, Lt. Bryan Crum told reporters.
At Tuesday’s vigil, David Brooks, who co-owns the burger joint on North Brevard Street, thanked everyone for their support.
“It’s tough, but we’re going to get by,” he said. “You know, a crowd like this, it’s just full of love. Thank you, guys. I thank each and every one of you for coming out tonight.
“You don’t know how much this has meant to me, but brother’s looking down on us now. This is great, because this is love, and this is what it’s all about.”
Flowers and cards crammed a long table outside the restaurant. Mourners also brought posters telling Scott Brooks how much he was loved and will be missed. Some people in their 50s told The Charlotte Observer they’d eaten at Brooks’ Sandwich House since they were preteens, when that part of town was known as north Charlotte.
Mourners sang “Amazing Grace” and “Silent Night” and lined up to hug David Brooks and other family members.
“This is family, and you just couldn’t ask for a better person,” Brooks’ worker Payton Link told reporters at the vigil.
“It’s really, really really scary because, I mean, we see 400 or 500 people come in and out of this restaurant every day, five days a week, and you would just never guess that someone had the audacity to come and take someone’s life that would give you the shirt off of their back,” Link said.
“Just for someone to do that knowing that we all, even customers feel like this is a home, and for someone to take all of that away from so many of us, it’s absolutely heartbreaking that someone didn’t have the heart to walk away from it and he did it anyway,” Link said.
“We are all family here and they have put a big hole in that family, and now Brooks honestly won’t be the same,” she said.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Scott Brooks’ niece, Lauren Brooks Thorp, told The Observer at the vigil. “It’s really hard. I work with him every day. He’s my buddy. We butted heads, but he’s my uncle, like my second dad. He was always there for me.”
”This blows me away,” Thorp said of the turnout. “It means a lot. That was my uncle. He was a husband. He was a dad. So it means a lot that everybody’s out here.”
Staff videographer Xavier Tianyang Wang and Staff Writer Amanda Zhou contributed.
This story was originally published December 11, 2019 at 11:51 AM.