Despite a vow to facilitate a thorough investigation into the shooting death of Michael Brown, Ferguson police have yet to interview Dorian Johnson, Brown’s 22-year-old friend who was walking with the teen when he was killed.
Johnson’s lawyer, Freeman Bosley, also told MSNBC that police declined an offer to set up a meeting, although officials have yet to respond to that claim.
“They didn’t even want to talk to him,” said Bosley, a former mayor of St. Louis. “They don’t want the facts. What they want is to justify what happened … what they are trying to do now is justify what happened instead of trying to point out the wrong. Something is wrong here and that’s what it is.”
Johnson, whose harrowing account of what happened is one of the most powerful testimonies surrounding Brown’s death, spoke with MSNBC about the encounter with the officer who drew his gun on the two boys.
“I saw the barrel of the gun pointed at my friend,” said Dorian Johnson, 22. “Then I saw the fire come out of the barrel.”
“I could see so vividly what was going on because I was so close,” said Johnson, who said he was within arm’s reach of both Brown and the officer when the first of several shots was fired at the teen. Johnson says he feared for his life as he watched the officer squeezing off shot after shot…
“The whole time [the officer] was holding my friend until the gun went off,” Johnson noted.
Brown and Johnson took off running together. There were three cars lined up along the side of the street. Johnson says he ducked behind the first car, whose two passengers were screaming. Crouching down a bit, he watched Brown run past.
“Keep running, bro!,” he said Brown yelled. Then Brown yelled it a second time. Those would be the last words Johnson’s friend, “Big Mike,” would ever say to him.
Brown made it past the third car. Then, “blam!” the officer took his second shot, striking Brown in the back. At that point, Johnson says Brown stopped, turned with his hands up and said “I don’t have a gun, stop shooting!”
Those words, according to Johnson, were Brown’s last.
You can read the rest of Johnson’s account here.
SOURCE: MSNBC | VIDEO SOURCE: YouTube, MSNBC
