Clinton and Cristen Brink had moved their family to northwest Arkansas seven days before they were killed. Clinton was supposed to start a new job on Monday. On Saturday, July 26, 2025, they took their two daughters ages seven and nine for a hike through one of Arkansas’s most popular state parks. A stranger with a knife was waiting on the trail. Their daughters were unharmed. Their family said they died heroes protecting their little girls.
Clinton David Brink was forty-three years old. Cristen Amanda Brink was forty-one. They had spent several years in Montana before deciding to move south, following Clinton’s work he had transferred from Prairie Farms Dairy in South Dakota to the company’s subsidiary, Hiland Dairy, in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Water service at their Prairie Grove home had been turned on July 16. They had been in the state for ten days when they drove to Devil’s Den.
Friends from their time in Montana described them as the kind of people who show up. A woman named Danikka Harrell, a rehabilitation nurse who knew them from recreational volleyball games they organised at a local park, said they welcomed people without condition. She said they had helped her through a period when she struggled to find child care. She called them selfless and unconditional.
On the morning of Saturday, July 26, they took their daughters hiking at Devil’s Den State Park in Washington County a popular, heavily visited park in the Ozark Mountains, one of the most-loved outdoor destinations in the state.
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Devil’s Den
A hiker on the trail found the children first two girls, ages seven and nine, alone. Then found the bodies of their parents.
The area had poor cell service, and the gap between when the attack occurred and when authorities were reached is part of what investigators later pieced together from the timeline. When Arkansas State Police responded, they found Clinton and Cristen Brink dead on the trail. Both had been stabbed.
Their family released a statement after their deaths. It said Clinton and Cristen “died heroes protecting their little girls.”
The Kia Stinger
A witness had seen a bloodied man leaving the trail. The witness noted his car a Kia Stinger, though tape had been applied in a way that may have been intended to obscure the model. Law enforcement ran the registration. It came back to Andrew James McGann, twenty-eight years old, of Springdale. Four days after the murders, police arrested McGann without resistance at a hair salon. He had cuts on his hands. Blood consistent with the crime was found in his car. DNA testing would link him to evidence recovered at the scene. After receiving his Miranda warnings, investigators say he admitted to both killings.
He was charged with two counts of capital murder. He pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty.
No Motive
What prosecutors have acknowledged publicly is that they believe the attack was a completely random event. There is no known connection between Andrew McGann and the Brink family. They had arrived in Arkansas ten days before he killed them. He had no known adult criminal history.
He had, however, spent the preceding three years working as a school teacher across several states. Since 2022, McGann had been hired by at least five school districts in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. In 2023, he was placed on administrative leave from a Texas elementary school following concerns about classroom management, professional judgment, and what was described as student favoritism. An internal investigation found no evidence of inappropriate conduct with students, and he resigned. In 2024, he began at a Plano, Texas school district and resigned after four days. By the summer of 2025, he had taken a position with Springdale Public Schools. He had been living in northwest Arkansas the same part of the state where the Brinks had just arrived when he drove to Devil’s Den with a knife.
Prosecutors said there were no indications that the girls were his target.
Other Trails
After McGann’s arrest, investigators in other states began reviewing their own unsolved cases. In Sauk County, Wisconsin, detectives reopened the 2020 stabbing death of John Craig Schmutzer on the Grottos Trail at Devil’s Lake State Park a case that had remained unsolved for five years. The suspect in that attack had been described as approximately six feet tall with a slender to average build. Jail records list McGann at six feet. Wisconsin authorities confirmed they were examining whether the cases were connected.
In Vermont, a biologist and former dean named Honoree Fleming was found shot dead on the Delaware and Hudson Rail Trail in Castleton in October 2025 months after McGann’s arrest. Vermont State Police said there was no known link between McGann and Fleming’s death, and that he had no known connection to Vermont. But the proximity of the crime to a trail, and the fact that retired law enforcement officials told Fox News that agencies across the country with unsolved trail killings would likely be reviewing his case, placed Devil’s Den inside a larger and still-unresolved question.
The question is whether Clinton and Cristen Brink were the first people Andrew McGann killed on a trail, or whether they were not.
Prairie Grove
The Brinks’ daughters are with family. The investigation is ongoing. McGann’s case has not yet gone to trial. The family said the couple would forever live in all of their hearts.
Clinton Brink was supposed to start his new job on Monday. He had transferred across two states to take it. His wife had gone back to help him after getting their daughters to safety, and she was killed on the trail beside him.
Their daughters were seven and nine years old.
Clinton David Brink was forty-three years old. Cristen Amanda Brink was forty-one. They were killed on July 26, 2025, on a hiking trail at Devil’s Den State Park in Washington County, Arkansas. Their daughters, ages seven and nine, survived and are with family. Andrew James McGann, twenty-eight, of Springdale, was arrested four days later and charged with two counts of capital murder. He has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. No motive has been established.
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