The family of Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old who was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri last Saturday, held a press conference Monday morning to discuss the preliminary autopsy and the number of bullets fired at their son.
“The Brown family wanted to have this autopsy performed on their behalf because they did not know whether the federal officials were going to conduct their own independent autopsy, and they did not want to be left having to rely on the autopsy done by the St. Louis law enforcement agencies ‒ the same individuals they feel are responsible for executing their son in broad daylight,” Benjamin Crump, the lead counsel for the Brown family, said. “So therefore, that is why they begged and pleaded to have an independent autopsy done.”
The Brown family hired renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Michael M. Baden to conduct a second postmortem analysis on their son. The preliminary report, released to the New York Times Sunday night, shows that the unarmed teenager was shot at least six times, including twice in the head, while four shots hit his right arm. Any shots that missed the deceased would not have been able to be counted during the examination.
The number of shots fired “could have been answered on day one [by the Ferguson Police Department] if you really wanted to have transparency as the objective,” Crump said, referring to Baden’s initial conclusions.
“What does this preliminary autopsy tell us? It verifies that the witness accounts were true,” the civil rights attorney added. “That he was shot multiple times and it’s going to be one of those things that we have to get all the witness statements out and look at all the autopsies, all the evidence, to put this picture together.” The report also agrees with witness accounts that Brown’s hands were up when he died, Crump said.
“What else do we need to give them to arrest the killer of my child?” Crump quoted Lesley McSpadden, Brown’s mother, as saying.
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