Lake Oswego Man Arrested After Police Find His Mother Dead

Police have arrested Chad Brix, 52, after finding his 78-year-old mother dead at a Lake Oswego home Friday morning around 9 am. He was charged with second-degree murder and is currently being held in the Clackamas County Jail.

Brix’s mother is not named by police. In 2022, according to court filings, she and his brother-in-law were named co-guardians of Brix, who once owned a successful construction company and has three daughters, two of whom are teenagers. According to the guardianship petition, he became severely mentally ill around a decade ago and has since suffered from major delusions.

“Chad’s transformation due to mental illness is more tragic than most,” the petition states. “He was an extremely kind individual; the sort that held families together. He was absolutely dependable, a fine person and great father. At work he managed large construction sites working with dizzying complexities. Beginning about 10 or 11 years ago he steadily lost everything he had in life.”

According to the petition record, Brix was plagued by two recurring delusions: first, that powerful people in the community “put him in frightening and untenable situations and then place bets on whether or not he will be able to extricate himself” and, second, that people were harming his two daughters.

In late 2021, his delusions got steadily worse, court filings say: “In late December he was going through the neighborhood, hearing screams and looking for the garage where his girls were being murdered,” the petition states. A subsequent filing says that he armed himself with an ax and went knocking on neighbors’ doors, searching for his two daughters who he believed to be in danger.

According to court filings, he’d stopped taking his medications in early 2021 and since then had “decompensated dramatically” over the following year.

In February 2022, he was hospitalized at Unity Center for Behavioral Health in Portland after police found him wandering on private property. “The longer he goes without comprehensive treatment the deeper the psychosis and more difficult later treatment will become,” reads the petition.

The petition was granted shortly thereafter, and Brix’s mother and brother-in-law wrote that they “do intend to place the respondent in a mental-health treatment facility.” It’s not clear how long he spent there, if ever. Oregon has a severe lack of mental health care facilities. A state report published yesterday found Oregon needs 3,000 new adult treatment beds, at a construction cost of $500 million.

By early 2023, Brix was back living at the home on the same block where he was arrested. Brix’s mother, who lives in Washington, wrote in a report to the court that she was checking on Brix weekly. “Chad is now stable and his mental health is good to return to work,” she wrote last April, adding that he’d been taking his medicine regularly and was keeping his delusions under control.