As different eyewitness accounts of Michael Brown's murder have appeared here and there, there hasn't been much mention of the cumulative effect: There are now at least 5 eyewitnesses, all telling roughly the same story, that Michael Brown was shot down as he stood with arms up.
5 eyewitnesses to murder, and the shooter is free, on administrative leave, without charges.
Below, links and details of the 5 eyewitnesses.
The five eyewitnesses:
Dorian Johnson: Michael Brown's friend who was with him on August 9 when he was shot. In the linked MSNBC interview published August 12, he describes policeman grabbing Brown by the neck from inside police car, and as Brown struggles to get away, cop says "I'm going to shoot you" and shoots Brown in the right side. They both take off running, after Brown makes it past 3rd parked car officer shoots again, Johnson says hit him in back (could have missed him though). Brown turns around with hands up, says "I don’t have a gun, stop shooting!" and officer fires several more times and Brown crumples to ground.
@TheePharoah: lives across the street from the shooting, saw it from his phone, and live-tweeted it minutes after the shooting on August 9, including pictures of cops standing over Brown lying dead on the ground, before there was any public knowledge. The linked compilation of his tweets was put together by Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson. Notable excerpts: "the police just shot someone dead in front of my crib yo"; (to question "why did they shoot him?") "no reason! He was running!”; "dude was running and the cops just shot.him. i saw him die bruh"; and this dialogue (I'll use Q for someone else's question, A for TheePharoah's response)
Q: so the boys shot him?
A: yeah man. 7 times i think
Q: from behind?
A: the first two was, the next 5 werent, he turned around
Piaget Crenshaw: In this first article, August 10 in St. Louis paper, she's described as saying "she saw a police officer attempting to place Brown in the squad car. She then said she saw the teen, hands in the air, attempt to flee. Several shots hit Brown as he ran". Later on August 18 she gave an interview to CNN, along with her cellphone video of the moments after the shooting, where she says he was shot in the face and "Although Brown was running away from police, Crenshaw said that “when he turned towards the cop is when he let off the most shots.” "
Tiffany Mitchell, August 14: "In an interview with msnbc’s Lawrence O’Donnell, Tiffany Mitchell described hearing tires squeak and seeing “Michael and the officer wrestling through the [car] window.” Brown, she said, was struggling to get away while the officer continued to try to pull him closer. Concerned, Mitchell pulled out her phone, at which point she said the first shot was fired “through the window.” Mitchell then saw Brown break away from the officer’s grip and run down the street from the police vehicle.
“The officer gets out of his vehicle,” Mitchell said, “and he pursues him,” continuing to shoot at Brown. “Michael’s body jerks as if he was hit,” Mitchell explained, “and then he put his hands up,” and the officer continued to shoot at Brown until the teenager collapsed “all the way down to the ground.”
Altogether, Mitchell said, at least five or six shots were fired.
Contradicting an earlier statement by St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar, Mitchell said she did not see Brown or anyone else assault the officer. Brown’s body stayed out of the police vehicle the entire time, Mitchell said. She also contradicted Belmar’s statement that there was a struggle over the officer’s weapon."
Unidentified woman in LA Times story, Aug. 16: "A woman who lives in the complex and asked not to be identified for fear of being targeted by residents and police said she heard the commotion and ran to her balcony. She said Brown threw his hands up in the air, shouting, "Don't shoot!"
"The officer kept shooting and he fell to his knees, begging for his life," the woman said. "That's when he finished him off, shot him in the head.""
For anyone concerned that the eyewitnesses report shots from behind (though all agree those weren't the main set of shots; Dorian Johnson reported only 1 shot from behind, others said 2 shots), yet the autopsy was reported to say all of the shots were from the front: (1) shots could have missed, witnesses might have surmised wrongly that he was hit simply from the fact that he stopped after the shot and turned around with hands up; (2) NYT later corrected the initial autopsy report: "Prof. Shawn L. Parcells, a pathologist assistant based in Kansas who assisted Dr. Baden, said that one of the wounds on Mr. Brown’s arm could have been caused by a bullet fired from in front or behind."
And for those who, despite all the eyewitnesses, want to entertain fantasies that he was charging the policeman or some such, also note that he was shot 35 feet away from the patrol car; google 'Michael Brown 35 feet from patrol car' for umpteen references on this.
Finally, also worth noting is this report from the NY Times, Aug. 16 which, even if Brown had been shot by someone else, ought to be enough to charge the police with something serious: immediately after the shooting "Another neighbor, a woman who identified herself as a nurse, was begging the officers to let her perform CPR. They refused, Mr. Stone said, adding, “They didn’t even check to see if he was breathing.”" (That's at the very end of the article.) And of course no ambulance called, leaving him lying in the street for 4 hours.