On Wednesday night, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 aired video footage from a cellphone taken shortly after Micheal Brown was shot dead by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. The footage shows two contractors, roughly 50 feet away from the scene, reacting in the immediate aftermath of Brown’s shooting. The two construction workers have asked that they not be identified. It appears these are the same workers that provided eyewitness accounts to St. Louis area media last week.
Both contractors work for a construction firm out of Jefferson County and are not from Ferguson. Their testimony has jibed with other eyewitness accounts. It is thought that their eyewitness accounts add extra weight to efforts to charge and prosecute Wilson as neither are from the community nor had a personal relationship with Brown. While they wish to not be publicly identified, they have spoken with both the FBI and St. Louis County police. Also, they allowed CNN to interview them prior to the network releasing the video footage.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
Below is the video, courtesy of CNN:
As you can see in the video, one worker is yelling towards where Officer Wilson shot Brown. He shouts, “He had his f***ing hands in the air!” The worker also pantomimes Brown’s motions, throwing his hands up. The details both workers gave CNN were very graphic. One man states that he saw Brown’s “brains come out of his head.” The workers also described how Brown was running from Wilson and was putting his hands up in the air. Wilson shot at Brown while he was running away. After that, Brown stopped, turned around and exclaimed, “OK, OK, OK,” while still having his hands in the air.
The two witnesses state that Wilson continued firing on Brown. They describe Brown staggering towards Wilson, but essentially as if he was dead on his feet due to the shots. One of the witnesses said that Wilson never said a word to Brown. Instead, he just kept shooting at him. Another person pulled up to the workers while they were standing by their truck. The other person, who the two workers do not know, said, “He was no f***ing threat at all!” Other details from the tape show a police officer taping off the scene. One worker said that at the time the tape was shot, three officers were at the scene. He also says that he saw another Ferguson police officer draw a weapon at the scene, but not fire.
This is just one more piece of damning evidence that pretty much proves what should be obvious to all. Michael Brown was executed by Officer Darren Wilson. This was not an instance of an officer trying to protect himself from a deadly assault from an assailant. This wasn’t an instance of a law enforcement official utilizing deadly force to stop a dangerous criminal from harming others. No, this appears to be an instance of a police officer, who is supposed to protect and serve the community, taking down an unarmed teenager for the extremely menacing crime of jaywalking.
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
