Below is my best attempt to reconstruct where the witnesses were based on the grand jury transcripts. The ones in bright yellow I'm pretty sure about. The ones that are orange I'm less sure and indicate approximate location. If you are still reading the grand jury documents, I hope this helps. I would also appreciate any corrections.
Sorry for the poor image quality. I don't have image editing software, so I had to use Powerpoint and take a screenshot. If anybody has any better ideas on getting a clearer image from a Powerpoint slide, let me know.
In the next section, I justify these placements. If you want to skip over the nitty-gritty details, go to the discussion section at the end, where I try to analyze what this might mean. I also include an index to witnesses appearances in the grand jury volumes at the end.
If you want to follow the details on reconstructing this witness map, it's helpful to have the street names down. Here's a street map.
Important streets are the two Caddiefield Roads at the bottom; Coppercreek Road to the left and top; the parking area in Copper Creek Court to the right; and the parking area in Canfield Court, again to the right.
Piaget Crenshaw: Below is the vid she took from her balcony.
The vid from Piaget shows Brown’s body, and a large green space beyond. So she’s definitely looking south, not north. The angle suggests that her view is from the balcony further west, since Brown is well to her left. Below is the Google Streetview image looking at 2947 Canfield Dr. The streetlamp where Brown allegedly ran to is depicted on the right. This is looking west down Canfield.
If you read Piaget’s testimony, you’ll note that her view of Wilson at one point was partially obscured, but that she could see Brown. It’s because of that brick front covering the staircase, but which allows views through the sides. Here’s a larger pic to show that.
Tiffany Mitchell: She came from West Florissant down Canfield, pulled into the Canfield Apartments parking, then ran across a green. Given that she was coming from the west to get Piaget, it makes the most sense that she pulled into the parking lot just west of Piaget’s apartment (why park across the street?). So she’s about 200 feet away.
The Two Contractors (often referred to as the Construction Workers): Based on these shots from cellphone video, they appear to be looking southwest towards the streetlamp.
There are two parking areas separated by a green area, with two rectangles for dumpsters; so this can’t be Caddiefield. This is just to the right of Piaget Crenshaw’s building. They are in Canfield Court. This would put the two contractors at perhaps 200 to 250 feet from where Brown turned and then fell.
Witness 10: Unclear exactly where this worker was. But for the grand jury he says at a minimum he was 50 yards west of the SUV, so 300 to 350 feet from where Brown turned and then fell. Initially, however, he said in earlier interviews that he was 100 yards away from the SUV, which would have put him 450 to 500 feet away from where Brown fell.
Witness 12 (Michael Brady): Below is the vid that Brady took after he ran downstairs from his apartment to take it. It appears he is looking east, from west of Piaget Crenshaw’s apartment. He initially observed from his building, then ran down to take the vid, so his building was probably the one just northwest of Piaget’s.
Witness 14, along with his brother and sister-in-law: Witness 14 is observing from patio on the second floor while waiting for his brother and sister-in-law to visit him. His building is on the south side of Canfield (p. 128, vol. 8). He says he sees the passenger side of the SUV and he says he is seeing Brown in full side profile when he is being shot (p. 134). His brother and sister-in-law say they pulled into Caddiefield Road, then joined 14. There are two Caddiefield Roads listed, so one can’t tell which building they were in based on that. However, of the building that abut Caddiefield, it’s only from 9300-9398 Canfield and 9390 Canfield in which there are stairs that allow views to where Brown fell. The staircases are the square protrusions from the buildings you see from a bird’s eye view. If they were at 2907 Caddiefield Road, they probably wouldn’t have been able to see from the staircase. In addition, based on the witnesses seeing Brown’s left side when Brown fell, they are most likely at 9390 Caddiefield Road, as depicted on the witness map. That means they also were the some of the closest witnesses with the best views.
White Monte Carlo: The driver, who lives in Northwinds, was driving towards West Florissant, and was behind Wilson’s SUV when it stopped (Vol. 12, pp. 106-107). So the white Monte Carlo was slightly east of the SUV and the driver says they stopped “right in between the apartment complex” (p. 107). Not sure what that means, so the white Monte Carlo could be anywhere from 160 to 75 feet from the streetlamp where Brown turned around. The driver does say that they were afraid Wilson would hit them when he reversed the SUV (p. 114), so probably closer to the western end of Piaget’s apartment building. There were two people in the white Monte Carlo (no witness numbers) and it is from here that Dorian Johnson witnessed events.
The minivan-mother, father (Witness 30), two daughters (Witness 48 and 64): According to 48’s testimony, they were at Coppercreek Road (Vol. 18, p. 47). According to the father, it was when they first turned the bend of Canfield, right around Coppercreek Road, that they heard a shot (Vol. 12, pp. 17-18). He says his wife stopped driving, and after Wilson killed Brown, they took a left on to Coppercreek Road (Vol. 12, p. 35). 48 does say they just two car-lengths from the SUV (Vol. 18, p. 48), but her estimation of distance has to be wrong. They were probably a little over 400 feet from the street lamp where people say Brown turned, and had one of the most distant views.
Other drivers
Witness 34: west of Wilson’s SUV; didn’t see final shooting sequence.
Witness 37: was in a car right next leasing office (p. 5 of FBI transcript), also says “four or five cars” west of Wilson’s SUV (Vol. 14, p. 15).
Others in west side of map
Witness 44: on south side of Canfield, coming from library, was next to leasing office (p. 2 of FBI transcripts), took cover around mailboxes.
People in the Copper Creek Court area (east of Piaget’s building)
Witness 41: has window on Copper Creek Ct. (vol. 16, p. 9); rushes out to about intersection of Canfield and Copper Creek (vol. 16, pp. 13-14); only saw last shot to Brown.
Witness 42: on balcony, only sees Brown and Wilson as they come close to east end of Canfield (vol. 16, p. 57); contractors were working on the side of his building (vol. 16, p. 59).
Witness 45: driving toward W. Florissant, pulled into driveway on Copper Creek Court, bummed cig from friend, was near a dumpster (vol. 17, p. 84, 86, 125). There’s two squares visible in Google’s satellite view, which hold blue dumpsters. You can also see them in the photo above of the vid of the two contractors. It is unclear how 45 saw initial altercation at SUV if she is near the dumpster (vol. 17, p. 133); probably not a credible witness, since saw 2 cops in Wilson’s SUV and her position doesn't have sightline down Canfield.
Witness 46: traveling east on Canfield (vol. 17, p175), pulled over car because afraid of getting ticket from Wilson, who she says was also traveling east and passed her up before encountering Brown; this is not correct, because Wilson was traveling west (vol. 17, p. 179), so probably not a credible witness.
Ignored: I’m going to go ahead and ignore 40 (the racist) and 35 (whose testimony doesn’t match up with the way bullets entered into Brown); Witness 22 (recanted) and her boyfriend (whose perspective Witness 22 said she repeated; he only saw the last shot, after Brown had already turned and had been shot)
The following witnesses had no perspective on the shootings that felled Brown: 38, 43.
DISCUSSION: Assuming Google Earth view is to scale, who were the witnesses within 150 feet of where Brown turned and saw everything from the point of the turning afterwards? Witness 14 and his brother and sister-in-law; Witness 16 (Piaget); the driver and passenger in the Monte Carlo; Dorian Johnson.
Who were the witnesses between 200 and 250 feet of where Brown turned and saw everything from that point on? Tiffany Mitchell, the two contractors.
Indeterminate, maybe 250 to 300 feet: Michael Brady, Witness 34, Witness 42.
Witnesses 300 to 400 feet out from final shooting sequence: Witness 10, all four in the minivan (including 30, 48, 64), Witness 37, and Witness 44.
Ones I'm leaving out for credibility problems or lack of view on initiation of final two volleys of shots: 22, 35, 38, 40, 41, 43, 45, 46.
The closest witnesses all agree that Brown was WALKING back toward Wilson. The two witnesses who said Brown definitely charged were 300 to 400 feet back, and were witnessing the events head on to Brown’s perspective; their perspective, with Brown facing them, was extremely foreshortened, compounded by the distance, which makes it extremely hard to judge whether someone is walking or charging.
Close witnesses disagree about whether Brown’s hands were up; however, NONE of the closest witnesses saw Brown reaching for his waistband after he had turned around, before Wilson fired. All of the closest witnesses also agree that Brown’s palms were either up at his shoulders turned toward officer, or down by sides, but palms facing forward. NONE of the close witnesses interpreted Brown’s walk back towards Wilson as threatening.
My suspicion now is that the grand jury for some reason privileged the testimony of the sister-in-law to Witness 14. She said Brown's hands were pointing down, but with palms facing forward.
I believe that the grand jury could not have possibly viewed the witnesses who said Brown charged as being 100 percent sure of what they saw; they were just too far. If that is true, then the grand jury interpreted WALKING back towards Wilson when Wilson was 20 to 30 feet away as sufficient cause to shoot him. That’s the problem. Just walking back towards someone was likely considered justification to shoot them in the minds of some grand jurors.
Addendum: Index of Witness Grand Jury Appearances. One thing to note is that there are more eyewitnesses than the PBS spreadsheet that appeared before.
Mon Dec 08, 2014 at 4:51 AM PT: The Washington Post has printed their own witness map, which coincidentally also came out on Saturday, 12/6. It's here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Comparing mine with theirs, I probably got Witness 12 (who I think is Michael Brady) wrong. Now re-reading some of the transcripts again, they may be right in placing Witness 12 (who they call 4) in Piaget's building. He does say in the transcripts that his view from second floor apartment is directly through the passenger side of the SUV (vol. 7, p12). At one point, Wilson may have been five feet away from the witness (vol. 7, p. 23), though that may have been the prosecutor mishearing something. I may have been thrown off by the vid in the Anderson Cooper interview with Brady, which I thought was vid by Brady, but now I'm not sure. I should also note that 12 did not see when Brown turned; by the time he got back to his balcony, Wilson was firing the finishing shots at Brown.