(Warning: Contains image of Michael Brown preliminary autopsy diagram.)
Dr. Baden's private preliminary autopsy results have come in and, as I honestly rather expected, are very interesting from the perspective of suggesting the story of what happened.
The story, at least according to one radio caller whose story was deemed "accurate" to Wilson's own account of the shooting according to CNN, is that Brown turned around, taunted Wilson, and then began charging him at full speed. Wilson opens fire, hitting Brown 4 times in the arm, then twice in the head, before Brown ends up on the ground 2-3 feet from Wilson.
This version of events is certainly dramatic. It could be possible, based on Baden's preliminary results.
But it doesn't pass the sniff test for me.
If you care to read a different take from an armchair M.E., please join me below the fold.
First up, full disclosure: I am neither a medical examiner, nor a member of law enforcement. I am, however, passing familiar with police firearms training and reality outside of action movies.
Of particular importance is the diagram of the body, indicating four shots to the front of the right arm, and two to the head. One of the shots to the head passed through the lower jaw, re-entering around the collarbone. The widely available diagram follows, though I borrowed it from DayAndADream.com.
Fortunately, while diagrams aren't especially graphic, they do provide potentially critical information. Of particular importance to this analysis:
1: Police officers, like anybody who actually wants to hit their target, are trained to shoot center-mass. IE, their training focuses not on hitting fast-moving, small targets like arms and legs, but the biggest target that will take the most time to move out of your line of fire. Bullets are pesky little things in that they don't stop moving once they are past your target if you miss - sometimes not even if you hit - and tend to end up embedded in vehicles, trees, the ground, or other people. This is important because of where it suggests the arm was.
2: The human body, when shot fatally, tends to drop like a sack of potatoes. Newton's laws still apply; if the body is in motion, it will tend to stay in motion until acted upon by an outside force. However, given the outside force of 'gravity' no longer has anything fighting it, that force tends to act very quickly. At 32 f/s^2, it takes approximately... let's say .6 seconds for a body to fall six feet. There are other vagaries involves here, particularly related to the natural resistance of the human body structure, and Brown being bent over when he was fatally shot, but let's say those all cancel out.
Furthermore, once the body is no longer constantly applying forward momentum, it effectively stops moving. There's the distance covered by "the body stretches out," but if you were to shoot world-record holder Usain Bolt, travelling at top footspeed of 12.42 m/s, his body would not land some 7 meters from where it was shot unless it was tumbling and rolling the whole way, cartoon style. Ergo, the body likely dropped within 1-2 feet of where the fatal shot was fire.
3: There was no evidence found of a struggle, and there are no indications of significant abrasions on the body. This supports the finding of point 2, that the body would pretty much drop once dead.
4: Most guns leave residue (GSR) at a distance of 3-5 feet from the target. GSR is particularly fond of surfaces with oils on them, like hair or sweaty skin. There was no residue found on the body, though the clothes have not been examined at this point. Given reports that Brown was seen "on his stomach with his arms next to him" shortly after shots were fired, it is highly unlikely that he traveled much further than the 1-2 feet in points 2 and 3.
5: An individual charging at a police office from within roughly 20 feet is generally close enough that, in the time it takes the officer to draw, aim, and fire, they have the potential to kill the officer. This is important because, if Brown did charge at Wilson from, say, 30 or so feet away, it is plausible that he posed a very real threat to the officer by the time Wilson was shooting.
Now, these five points can come together to support the caller's version of events.
In order for that to be true, Wilson would have had to fire four shots into Brown's arm, rather than center-mass, before firing the fatal shots at the last possible moment before Brown charged into him, linebacker style, Brown's body falling at least half his height to come to a rest 2-3 feet from Wilson without having any GSR found in his hair; bear in mind that he was shot in the top of the head, so any GSR would have been deposited right in it.
It could also be true that the eyewitness misjudged the final distance from Brown to Wilson; if Brown landed further away, he would have been shot from further away, which would make it less likely for GSR to be deposited in his body. Still, Wilson would have had to be a lucky shot to get those four bullets in Brown's moving, pumping arm at the time he was charging.
Either of those scenarios would support the story presented by the caller, and strongly support the idea that this could have been a justified shooting, considering their incredible proximity at the time of the fatal shot.
However, there is another story that is supported as well.
Brown attempts to flee after hearing Wilson's gun go off. The fact that there was no GSR, or evidence of a struggle, suggests that he was not actually trying to get Wilson's service weapon at the time, though it is possible that he was, sustained no bruises or abrasions during the struggle, and the position of the weapon when it went off prevented him from getting any residue on his hands. The (as yet unsubstantiated, to the best of my knowledge) report that Wilson showed signs of swelling in his face indicates that maybe it did happen that way.
Either way, Brown attempts to flee, and no longer presents a present threat to the officer or, presumably, any other members of the community. However, having been struck, it is plausible that Wilson would have gotten out to pursue, shout for Brown to stop, etc. It is possible that another shot is fired at this point; if so, I would deem this an utterly unnecessary use of force, and a stupid one at that. Rule number one of firing a gun; always know where the bullet will stop. Warning shots are just another way of killing somebody you didn't mean to.
I believe that Brown, perhaps hearing that next shot or two, makes the decision to surrender. He turns around, raising his hands in either a show that he is unarmed, or in an instinctive defensive response.
Again, either way, Wilson opens fire. It is possible, albeit highly unlikely, that he misinterpreted Brown's reaction as going for a weapon of his own. I say unlikely because of the story that Brown charged him. If this story is "accurate" to Wilson's own, presumably he made this statement as well. This strongly indicates to me that he does not and did not believe at any point that there was a gun in play besides his own; if he did, he would have said that he believed Brown was going for a gun, because that would immediately make this much more believable as a mistake.
Four shots are fired into Brown's body, hitting the palm of the hand, and ripping into the inner side of his arm. Without knowing where in the body the bullets were found, it's hard to know if the shots were stopped by bone, or through and through, but it is apparent that at least one of the shots tore through the upper muscles of the arm and into the shoulder. It is also possible that a single bullet could account for both the palm wound and one of the other wounds to the body.
Either trying to make his surrender more clear, or following Wilson's directions, Brown kneels, or at least tries to, right arm hanging uselessly (quite possibly out of necessity, since the shoulder wound may have damaged the nerves to control the arm), left arm above his head to indicate he's not a threat.
For whatever reason, still at a distance, Brown fires twice more. One of these shots, likely the first, catches Michael above the right eye. The other strikes the apex of his head.
No GSR. Body is left to lie as it is found, as has been shown on video.
All of this is consistent with the autopsy findings. It doesn't matter if a test screen came back positive for THC if this is what happened. It doesn't matter if a test screen came back positive either way, because those screens are known for giving false positives, and say nothing about how much was in the system, and either way kids high on pot usually don't go charging people like bulls. Especially not people who are shooting at them. That's PCP, not THC, two whole consonants different.
All of this is, to me, a much more plausible sequence of events.
Need the full autopsy results (and, you know, somebody who's an actual expert instead of just a forensics junkie who knows better than to believe CSI and the like), but it smells a lot more like a bad, bad shoot, than it does an incredible series of shots stitching up along the arm and head.