Evidence supports officer’s account of shooting in Ferguson, Missouri

I suspended judgment on this case- this is my first blog post on it. I am writing about it now because the evidence is just in.

Here’s the story from leftist Washington Post.

Excerpt:

Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson and Michael Brown fought for control of the officer’s gun, and Wilson fatally shot the unarmed teenager after he moved toward the officer as they faced off in the street, according to interviews, news accounts and the full report of the St. Louis County autopsy of Brown’s body.

Because Wilson is white and Brown was black, the case has ignited intense debate over how police interact with African American men. But more than a half-dozen unnamed black witnesses have provided testimony to a St. Louis County grand jury that largely supports Wilson’s account of events of Aug. 9, according to several people familiar with the investigation who spoke with The Washington Post.

Some of the physical evidence — including blood spatter analysis, shell casings and ballistics tests — also supports Wilson’s account of the shooting, The Post’s sources said, which casts Brown as an aggressor who threatened the officer’s life. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited from publicly discussing the case.

The grand jury is expected to complete its deliberations next month over whether Wilson broke the law in confronting Brown, and the pending decision appears to be prompting the unofficial release of information about the case and what the jurors have been told.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch late Tuesday night published Brown’s official county autopsy report, an analysis of which also suggests that the 18-year-old may not have had his hands raised when he was fatally shot, as has been the contention of protesters who have demanded Wilson’s arrest.

Experts told the newspaper that Brown was first shot at close range and may have been reaching for Wilson’s weapon while the officer was still in his vehicle and Brown was standing at the driver’s side window. The autopsy found material “consistent with products that are discharged from the barrel of a firearm” in a wound on Brown’s thumb, the autopsy says.

Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist in San Francisco who reviewed the report for the Post-Dispatch­, said it “supports the fact that this guy is reaching for the gun, if he has gunpowder particulate material in the wound.”

Melinek, who is not involved in the investigation, said the autopsy did not support those who claim Brown was attempting to flee or surrender when Wilson shot him in the street.

[…]Seven or eight African American eyewitnesses have provided testimony consistent with Wilson’s account, but none have spoken publicly out of fear for their safety, The Post’s sources said.

[…]Jurors have also seen the St. Louis County autopsy report, including toxicology test results for Brown that show he had tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in marijuana, in his system. The Post’s sources said the levels in Brown’s body may have been high enough to trigger hallucinations.

[…]The autopsy says that Brown was shot in the forehead, twice in the chest and once in the upper right arm. The fatal wound to Brown’s head indicates that he was leaning or falling forward, and the path of a sixth shot, which hit Brown’s forearm and traveled from the back of his arm to his inner arm, means that Brown’s palms were not facing Wilson in an act of surrender, according to analysts cited by the Post-Dispatch.

In interviews with The Post, sources said blood spatter evidence shows that Brown was heading toward the officer during their faceoff, but analysis of the evidence did not reveal how fast Brown was moving.

Now, that’s not what we heard in the mainstream media before the actual forensic tests were done, but that’s what the evidence shows. And lest anyone accuse me of racism, I noticed a video with Brown’s mother and my skin is darker than hers. Facts are facts, skin color doesn’t matter.

2 thoughts on “Evidence supports officer’s account of shooting in Ferguson, Missouri”

  1. Wintery Knight. I agree. But do you realize what the implications are now we know the officer is innocent. Who is guilty of the young boy’s death? Whoever taught him his hatred of white police. Whoever taught him to disrespect the law. His own friends and family? His peers? His town? Racism has consequences.

    I do sympathize with a people who have suffered terrible injustices in the past. I am a great admirer of some of the black civil rights activists of the ’60s. I wrote a Blues Poetry Tribute for Nina Simone this summer: http://christsfaithfulwitness.blogspot.com/2014/08/blues-poem-for-american-lost.html#.VEryHUskOpV

    And in my Black Arts Poetry Class in the once lily white Port Townsend, Wash., the other students knew not to mention poems where some person was not admitted to the hospital because of color because I would start crying.

    But a people who lack forgiveness burden themselves and their children. Michael Brown is a prime example. In the class I was talking to a young black woman at one of our social gatherings, and I mentioned that I thought Nina Simone was like my mother, who was from Port Townsend. Her hackles went up because really what could a white woman from a small town in Washington State which had only two non-white families have in common with Black Civil rights activist Nina Simone? Well, I said, they both had a strong sense of right and wrong. “Oh,” she said, the wind knocked out of her.

    God bless you. Susan Fox http://www.christsfaithfulwitness.com

    Like

  2. Apart from the killing itself, what do you think of the police response to the demonstrations?

    If we conclude that Wilson was justified in killing Brown, does that mean the police were also justified in their actions over the following weeks?

    Like

Leave a reply to christsfaithfulwitness Cancel reply