DETROIT — CNN is on the television in the living room of Antoinette Brown and Travon King’s small, but tidy house Wednesday morning here on the city’s far east side, a couple blocks south of 8 Mile Road.

A report comes on about a tweet sent by Donald Trump, wondering if he would receive a thank you from three UCLA basketball players he helped gain a release from Chinese detention after they were arrested on three counts of shoplifting last week.

“I’ll thank him,” Antoinette interrupted, speaking to the TV. “If Trump helps us, if he helps Wendell, I won’t stop thanking him. He helped get three basketball players who were guilty get out. I pray he’ll help get my innocent son out. And if he does, I’ll thank him and thank him and thank him.”

Wendell Brown, 30, is a former football star in Detroit, a standout at powerhouse King High School and then a three-year starting linebacker at Ball State in Indiana where he graduated in 2009. He later played for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League, a number of arena teams and even a professional league in Austria. He also coached the game, at King High and then a season as an assistant at Adrian College, a D-III program in Michigan.

View photos Wendell Brown, back, has spent time in China teaching the game of football to kids. (Courtesy of the Brown family) More

In 2015, he found his way to Chongqing, China, a city of some 18 million in the southwest part of the country, to play and then, after an injury, coach in the American Football League of China. It seemed like an incredible opportunity. While there he taught English to adults and football to kids. He spoke at the U.S. Embassy about the game. To supplement his income, he opened a cross training business, Brown Elite Fitness.

As a 6-foot, 225-pound African-American in the middle of China, he stood out. Brown is in incredible physical condition and was a cast member once on the Discovery Network reality television show, “American Muscle.” Pictures of him putting middle-aged locals through workouts and barking motivational sayings at them – “Elite!”, “All Day!”, “Eight Days a Week”— entertained his family back home.

“We used to joke with him, ‘You look like Billy Blanks,’ ” Antoinette said with a laugh.

Life was great until Sept. 24, 2016, when Brown attended a birthday party for a friend at a bar. As Wendell’s side tells it, he struggled to blend in when out on the town because many Chinese assumed he was either rich or famous. That night some men wanted to drink with him, but Brown declined. They got angry and a dispute broke out. Brown was later arrested for hitting a man. Brown claimed he never hit anyone and only raised his arms to block bottles being thrown at him.

Regardless, Brown was taken to the Chongqing Jiangbei detention center. He had never before been arrested. Faced with no American-style bail available, no discovery process about the evidence against him and a confusing array of laws that bear little resemblance to the United States, he’s spent the past 14 months in a Chinese jail.

Back in Detroit, Antoinette and King, her husband of 17 years, didn’t know anything had happened for days. Antoinette said she began getting concerned when Wendell didn’t text or call; he usually checked in daily. Finally, the phone rang from his number, but it was one of his friends in China trying to explain the situation.

The family was helpless. They were unable to have any contact with Wendell. Letters to and from that contained much information about the case were intercepted. They hired a lawyer in China, who was allowed to speak with him, but then was told that the way for this to end was to come up with $100,000 U.S. as restitution. King is a barber and Brown a hairstylist, co-owners of the small Kingz & Queenz Salon on Gratiot in this hard-hit city. Men’s haircuts start as low as $5.

“There was no way,” King said.

Story continues