Autopsy Shows Michael Brown Was Shot From The Front, Consistent With Claims He Charged Officer

An image take from the autopsy showing entry, exit, and reentry wounds to Michael Brown.

Noted pathologist Michael Baden’s autopsy of Ferguson, Missouri’s Michael Brown seems to have discredited stories told by several eyewitnesses that the NFL lineman-sized man was shot in the back and “executed” by a local police officer. Simultaneously, the autopsy is consistent with the recently discovered eyewitness account of the shooting captured in the audio of a YouTube video taken minutes after the shooting that suggests Brown was attempting to attack officer Darren Wilson a second time when he was killed.

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An image take from the autopsy  showing entry, exit, and reentry wounds to Michael Brown.
An image take from the autopsy showing entry, exit, and reentry wounds to Michael Brown.

Rioting broke out shortly after Brown’s killing when eyewitnesses from Brown’s neighborhood, including one Dorian Johnson, claimed that police officer Wilson shot Brown in the back for no apparent reason.

The officer drew his weapon, and “he said, ‘I’ll shoot you’ or ‘I’m going to shoot’ ” and almost instantaneously fired his weapon, hitting Brown, Johnson said.

Johnson and a bloodied Brown took off running, and Johnson hid behind the first car he saw, he said. The officer got out of his car.

“I saw the officer proceeding after my friend Big Mike with his gun drawn, and he fired a second shot and that struck my friend Big Mike,” Johnson told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “And at that time, he turned around with his hands up, beginning to tell the officer that he was unarmed and to tell him to stop shooting. But at that time, the officer firing several more shots into my friend, and he hit the ground and died.”

“We wasn’t committing any crime, bringing no harm to nobody, but my friend was murdered in cold blood,” he told KMOV.

Witness Tiffany Mitchell was picking up Piaget Crenshaw for work when she saw Brown and the officer “tussling through the window.” Mitchell and Crenshaw concurred with Johnson, saying Brown appeared to be trying to pry himself away from the officer’s grasp. Brown had his hand on the police cruiser, trying to push himself away, Mitchell said.
Mitchell reached for her phone to record the encounter.

“I didn’t get the video because a shot was fired through the window so I tried to get out of the way,” she said.
After that shot, Brown broke free from the officer’s grasp, both women told CNN, and started running, but he only got about 20 feet from the squad car by Crenshaw’s estimate.

“The cop gets out of his vehicle shooting,” Mitchell said. “(Brown’s) body jerked as if he was hit from behind, and he turned around and he put his hands up. … The cop continued to fire until he just dropped down to the ground, and his face just smacked the concrete.”

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The accounts by Johnson, Mitchell, and Crenshaw helped stir up riots in Ferguson which are still continuing and seem to be intensifying.  The riots have resulted in Missouri Governor Jay Nixon first imposing a curfew, then activating the Missouri National Guard last night.

These accounts which claimed Brown was shot from behind are strongly contradicted by the physical evidence, which shows all wounds to Brown were fired from his front. The shot that pathologist Baden seems to think was the fatal shot was a shot that entered the top of Brown’s skull from a downward forward angle, which would support the newest claim that NFL lineman-sized Brown was shot as he charged at the officer.

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michael brown

Blog The Conservative Treehouse has provided a transcript of a conversation of an eyewitness to the shooting, which begins at 6:28 in an video taken minutes after the shooting, and which seems to support the contention that Brown turned and rushed the officer (our bold below):

#1 How’d he get from there to there?

#2 Because he ran, the police was still in the truck – cause he was like over the truck

{crosstalk}

#2 But him and the police was both in the truck, then he ran – the police got out and ran after him

{crosstalk}

#2 Then the next thing I know he doubled back toward him cus – the police had his gun drawn already on him –

#1. Oh, the police got his gun

#2 The police kept dumpin on him, and I’m thinking the police kept missing – he like – be like – but he kept coming toward him

{crosstalk}

#2 Police fired shots – the next thing I know – the police was missing

#1 The Police?

#2 The Police shot him

#1 Police?

#2 The next thing I know … I’m thinking … the dude started running … (garbled something about “he took it from him”)

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A caller to the Dana Loesch radio show claims that the officer who shot Brown told a very similar story, where Brown attempted to “bum-rush” Officer Wilson from 10-12 yards away after first fighting with the officer at the police SUV for control of the gun, resulting in the weapon discharging.

While I am not a pathologist, I do know a little bit about shot placement.

Consistent hits to the right side of the target facing the shooter strongly suggests that the shooter was snatching the trigger, which you would expect from an officer being charged at close range who had to fire a volley of shots inside two seconds.

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An image take from the autopsy  showing entry, exit, and reentry wounds to Michael Brown.
An image take from the autopsy showing entry, exit, and reentry wounds to Michael Brown.

It is also worth noting where pathologist Baden’s opinion goes sideways. In the New York Times article, Baden also asserts:

“In my capacity as the forensic examiner for the New York State Police, I would say, ‘You’re not supposed to shoot so many times,'” said Dr. Baden, who retired from the state police in 2011. “Right now there is too little information to forensically reconstruct the shooting.”

I’m going to assume that Baden, despite his celebrity pathologist credentials, has never had intensive firearms training.

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Police officers are not taught to shoot to wound, nor are they taught to shoot to kill. They are trained to shoot to stop the threat. Officer Wilson appears to have done just that, ceasing fire once Brown was incapacitated.

The arm shots (which may have been just one or two hits with entry, exit, and reentry wounds) to the 6’4″ 292 lbs. Brown was relatively inconsequential in nature, as the witness noted in the transcript above when he stated,  “The police kept dumpin on him (shooting at him), and I’m thinking the police kept missing – he like – be like – but he kept coming toward him.”

Brown was not responding to the shots the officer was pointing at center mass (and snatching to his left/Brown’s right arm), and so the officer raised his weapon in a failure drill and fired two shots at Brown’s head.

The first bullet shot at his head entered Brown’s right eye and ricocheted downward out his jaw, reentering his collarbone. It was not apparently a fatal strike, as it did not hit the central nervous system.

The second bullet  fired at the head a fraction of a second later entered the top of Brown’s skull from the front—consistent with both claims that Brown was charging the officer—and was a fatal shot, penetrating to Brown’s brain. Brown fell to the ground just one yard in front of the officer.

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Of the six gunshot wounds to Brown, three were from the first bullet to Brown’s head (entry, exit, and reentry) and the fourth from the fatal shot to his head. The shots to Brown’s arms may have likewise been just one or two entry, exit, and reentry wounds. Just three bullets were recovered in Brown’s body, and it is possible that he was only hit three times.

Baden’s autopsy  was the second autopsy performed om Michael Brown’s body.

The first autopsy was conducted by the local medical examiner and hasn’t yet been released to the media. A third autopsy has been ordered by the Department of Justice.

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