Michael Brown was felled by six bullets, two to his head, according to Dr. Michael Baden, the former chief medical examiner in New York City. Dr. Baden, who conducted the preliminary autopsy at the request of the family, said of the six bullets that hit Brown, only three bullets were recovered from his body.
One of the bullets, he told reporters as they viewed diagrams, entered and exited several times. “This one here looks like his head was bent downward,” he said, pointing to the top of a diagram depicting Brown’s head. “It can be because he’s giving up, or because he’s charging forward at the officer.”
Dr. Baden recounted his findings Monday at a press conference in Ferguson with the family nearby, according to Carl Dix, who has been on the ground there for the last several days. “He said that Michael Brown could have survived the first five shots, but the one to the head was fatal,” Dix told the Amsterdam News Monday afternoon.
Dix, of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA will be conducting a press conference later on Monday to discuss the attacks on protesters prior to Sunday’s curfew. “The police, at this moment, are working to close all the streets with access to ground zero here at the Quick Trip store,” he added.
How Dr. Baden’s autopsy jibes with two others, one to be performed by the Justice Department will provide more clarity on the circumstances surrounding the August 9 shooting by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo.
Dr. Baden insisted that his information does not assign blame or justify the shooting. He said x-rays have to be examined, access to all the reports from witnesses as well as Brown’s clothing must be examined, which may explain at what distance he was when killed.
Before the autopsy was conducted and after the officer was identified, Brown’s parents and their attorney Benjamin Crump released a statement last Friday. “There is nothing based on the facts that have been placed before us that can justify the execution-style murder of their child by this police officer as he held his hands up, which is the universal sign of surrender,” the statement declared.
Attorney Crump, who represented Trayvon Martin’s family during the George Zimmerman trial, said the autopsy “verifies the worst that the family thinks happened—that he was executed,” he told USA Today on Monday. “It confirms what the witnesses said, that this was an execution. That’s what the witnesses said from day one.”
Crump also indicated that all the shots came from the front, which Dr. Baden had stated. “It’s so hard for his mother and father to even deal with the notion that this is what happened,” he added. “It’s obvious his hands were up at some point because you can tell how the bullet goes from in and out.”
The attorney also expressed his derision about the release of video that appears to show Brown in a convenience store with his friend Dorian Johnson, one of the key eyewitnesses to the shooting. The man in the store is shown shoving aside the storekeeper with merchandise in his hand that was later said to be a box of cigarillos.
A call to Attorney Crump’s office had not been returned at press time.
This incident occurred shortly before Brown’s encounter with Wilson, who was not aware of the alleged robbery.
“The initial contact between the officer and Mr. Brown was not related to the robbery,” said Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson.
Police officials and residents fear that more violence will erupt once the autopsy reaches the media, but at midnight on Sunday the streets around Ferguson were empty. This was a dramatic difference from an earlier confrontation between protesters and the heavily armed police.
Thanks to the calming influence of Captain Ron Johnson the demonstrations have been to some extent minimize. Johnson told the press that first and foremost he was a black man with “a black son who wears baggy pants, his hat turned cocked to the side, and he had tattoos, but that’s my baby.” Johnson clearly placed black before blue, a situation that must be closely monitored in days ahead.
Consideration, too, must be given to the excessive militarization of the Ferguson police force in which many veteran civil rights activists said reminded them of Mississippi and Alabama back in the day. Some say it was more like South Africa during the uprisings in Soweto and Sharpeville.
Perhaps when the Justice Department steps meaningfully into this tragedy, protesters will feel that something is seriously being done.
As the National Guard has now been deployed in the area, President Obama took a break from his two-week vacation to return to the White House but that break was planned long before the turmoil in Ferguson.
The president has said that Attorney General Eric Holder is in charge of the ongoing investigation and the Department will be conducting its own autopsy. “This independent examination will take place as soon as possible,” said Justice Department spokesperson Brian Fallon. “Even after its complete, Justice Department officials still plan to take the state-performed autopsy into account in the course of their separate investigation.”
In the days ahead there are sure to be more details and controversy surrounding the death of Michael Brown who has practically pushed Eric Garner from the media spotlight, just as there is sure to be another unarmed black man “executed” by a white policeman.