The End of the “Michael Brown Shot From Behind” Myth

sharptonDr. Baden’s autopsy results put an end to the story line that Michael Brown had been shot from behind, and it brands as liars those witnesses who made up that story and claimed to have seen it happen.

And so now the people who want officer Wilson to be found guilty have retreated to a fall-back story that they think is consistent with the autopsy results: six shots was excessive and shows an officer out of control and firing wildly, needlessly endangering
life. But that story too, won’t work, because when we look at the pattern of the shots, they show exactly the opposite.

Two of the six shots are to the head, and everyone agrees that those must have been the last two, since they would have caused Michael Brown to fall to the ground. What about the other four? They are all to the right arm. Far from firing wildly, the officer was consistently aiming for the same part of the body. There is only one reasonable explanation for that. Officer Wilson was trying hard NOT to kill Michael Brown. He was trying to wing him, hoping that would stop his forward rush. That’s why he fired so many shots at the area of the right arm. The lethal shot was fired only after he had failed in
many attempts to stop Brown by winging him. Rightly understood, the six shots are not incriminating, but exculpatory.

Those first four shots also make nonsense of the other part of the revised story line: that Brown had his hands up in a gesture of surrender. Why would anyone shoot four times at a raised arm? That would surely be bizarre, especially for a man supposed to be full of lethal malice. The competing explanation makes perfect sense: the officer was firing at the right edge of the body to stop the forward-rushing Brown without killing him.

  • Joemyxplyx

    Shooting to ‘wing’ someone is a fantasy concept from B movies and comic books. Nobody is calm enough in a deadly force situation to take careful aim. Shooters practice to hit ‘center mass’, which is the area enclosed by the rib cage. Shots in there will disable the attacker eventually. Lung shots will kill but not right away. Even heart shots do not always kill right away. Attackers with their hearts shot away can still cover 25 feet or so and kill with a knife before perishing.

    Police after action reports show an appalling number of misses at close range by officers. The fact that Office Wilson kept all 6 shots near center mass even with his face bashed in and a berserk giant bum rushing him, probably means Michael Brown was really close as the shooting occurred.

    Four shots in Michael Brown’s arm is most likely because Brown was holding his arm in front of his chest not because Office Wilson was trying to ‘wing’ him. Two shots in the head is probably because Brown was putting his head down into butting position at the last second.

    • Charles Martel

      Yeah, I read the “trying to wing him” bit and decided the author of this article ought to stick to writing for the social page because he obviously doesn’t know anything about this subject.

      • MLCBLOG

        Maybe.

    • American Human

      Possibly true but the entry of the wounds into the arm could determine if the arm was in front or to the side, right? Was that part of the autopsy?

      • Charles Martel

        You can be sure that it was. Especially since it looks like there will be three autopsies.
        1) The local medical examiner
        2) His families
        3) Eric Holders

      • Joemyxplyx

        From the NY Times:
        “One of the bullets entered the top of Mr. Brown’s skull, suggesting his head was bent forward when it struck him and caused a fatal injury, according to Dr. Michael M. Baden, the former chief medical examiner for the City of New York, who flew to Missouri on Sunday at the family’s request to conduct the separate autopsy. It was likely the last of bullets to hit him, he said.

        Mr. Brown, 18, was also shot four times in the right arm, he said, adding that all the bullets were fired into his front”.

        I think the statement “…his head was bent forward” and the head shots were “…likely the last of the bullets to hit him” are consistent with my belief Brown lowered his head to butt Office Mitchel at the last minute.

        From the autopsy diagram the shot into his upper arm and the wound to his upper right chest look like they were from the same bullet.

        So, I still think the wounds are consistent with the notion of Brown bum-rushing Office Wilson, getting hit in the arm and upper chest and then in the head when he tried to butt Wilson.

        I’d also be willing to wager a small amount the autopsy report shows PCP in Brown’s blood when it comes back. That would be consistent with Brown trying to fight the cop for his gun after being told to get out of the street.

        BTW Brown escalated a jaywalking beef into a deadly force struggle when he went after the gun. Anyone fighting a cop for his gun is assumed to be trying to kill the cop.

      • jj

        I think his arms were in the running/jogging position which could explain the streaking bullet wound across the fleshy part of his palm (because the hands and forearm are pointing towards the general direction a person moves when they run – maybe angled a bit up towards the chest and swinging/veering at an inward angle). The bullet could go though the hand and then through the fleshy part of the forearm and/or the bicep because the arm is bent around 90 degrees or more when you run. So someone shooting directly at you from the front could hit your hand/forearm and the bullet goes through them and then hits the bicep.

        The right nipple area wound could have been one of the bullets that earlier passed through his hand and/or arm. The hands swing to the upper chest when a person runs with heavy effort – he was accelerating into his fullest speed, apparently.

        I also suspect that some bullets missed him off to his right.

        The officer himself was stunned that M.B. didn’t fall despite the shots until the very end when he went for the head shots.

        M.B. fell only 2-3 feet from the cop (I guess that would be the distance from the top of his head to where the cop was standing). So ad 6′ 4″ to 2-3 ft and you have 8 to 10 feet in distance plus forward momentum distance he was carried after he was last on his feet (I’ll guess 2 to 4 feet). So I’ll Brown was 12-14 feet from the cop when the fatal shot hit him. The cop was shooting at him as he covered a distance of around 20 feet (M.B. was estimated 35 feet away when he started his charge).

        • MLCBLOG

          Officer was stunned. I doubt it. I believe his training has taught him what to expect.

          • jj

            It is HIGHLY unusual for a suspect to do all the things Michael Brown did. To shove a policeman back in the car, beat him and go for his gun is very rare.

            Also, the policeman thought he was hitting M.B. in the chest, but it was hitting his arm instead and I believe some shots were missing that the policeman was thinking weren’t. The eye isn’t fast or sharp enough to see exactly where the bullets hit AS it happened. That’s why you have the investigations and autopsies.

            There is an “audio witness” which is from a video taken just after Brown died while he was still lying in the street, and a person was heard describing to another how Brown ended up where he was far from the police car.

            The witness does describe how Brown was running away (after the shot in the car) but turned around and saw the police “had his gun on him” and then started running back at the policeman. This witness saw how Brown wouldn’t stop and started “thinking he was missing” – by that the witness assumed the policeman was missing totally because it didn’t seem to effect Brown’s running directly towards him. So this witness, heard on the video, was shocked himself how Brown didn’t go down despite a large number of shots.

    • John Ellis

      According to Dr Baden, one of the arm wounds was a graze to the inside edge, and another was a fairly shallow wound, also inside edge. Had the arm been in front of the body, one or more bullets would have entered the main body area, but there were no signs of that. I agree that shooting to the edge of the body is highly unusual, not what he would have been trained to do, and also probably not wise. I took it that this was desperation on the part of a man who knew very well what was going to happen to him (and has happened) if he killed a black teenager.

    • MLCBLOG

      You sound so authoritative. Where do you get your facts?

  • BMS

    Gee Reverend Al I guess you picked the wrong poster boy for your “horrible white people inflicting genocide on innocent, young church-going, college bound black men” agenda. Your “gentle giant” turned out to be a thug and a criminal. Oh well I’m sure it won’t be long before you find your next photo-op in some unsuspecting town somewhere else in America with yet another fictitious story.

    • Sheik Yerbouti

      He’s done this same show before. He cut his teeth on falsely accusing cops. Nobody of any consequence calls him on it.

  • JVictor

    Spot-on.

  • Lanna

    Dr. Baden has always been right on…one of the most trusted forensic pathologists and Medical Examiners. Brown started out by stealing and went down hill from there, its a tragedy that these youths live their lives like this in a culture that contributes nothing positive to society

    • BS77

      IF he had been at home studying for his college courses, or preparing for a job interview NONE of this would have happened.

      • MLCBLOG

        Exactly!!

      • JayWye

        Brown’s upcoming “college” was a trade school,for HVAC.
        I suspect he didn’t have the grades for college.

  • CapitalistPig

    Generally, it is somewhat dangerous legal strategy to state “I was only trying to wound him”….as this could be sold to a sympathetic jury (to the person shot) as negating your rationale for the use of deadly force—fearing the loss of your own life or grave injury from an aggressor. You can almost write the prosecutions next line of questioning–”So you didn’t really believe Mr. Brown was armed & an immediate danger? If you had enough time to cherry pick your targeting, then wouldn’t it follow you had an avenue of time to escape & could have defused the situation without resorting to the use of your service revolver?”
    Better to simply state–”I shot until I felt I was no longer threatened”.

    • Wolfthatknowsall

      Indeed, there are only two reasons to draw your service weapon – as an implied threat of deadly force, or to use deadly force. In no case would a trained and experienced police officer use his weapon to “wound” a threat. The weapon is the last resort.

      • CapitalistPig

        That—& it’s better to not leave a wounded “victim” for a a lawyer to parade around in front of a jury like a baby seal with club marks on his head. Bernard Goetz found this out the hard way.
        Google it if you don’t remember, the case is fairly old now but not without parallel. He dodged criminal convictions but faced massive civil litigation. Shot 4 of these feral savages & did NYC a big favor–which of course didn’t go unpunished.

  • Mo86

    “Mr. Baden’s autopsy results put an end to the story line that Michael Brown had been shot from behind, and it brands as liars those witnesses who made up that story and claimed to have seen it happen.”

    Sadly, it did not. Facts don’t matter in this case. (Just like they never matter in any case these days.)

    In the eyes of the public, just like Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown was just an innocent black boy, gunned down by a white man, for no reason.

    That’s the narrative. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve tried to bring reason and facts into the discussion, these people WILL NOT listen.

    I don’t know what to do anymore.

  • Mo86

    And what’s this new story now that Brown paid for the items? I’ve heard it several times, but of course they don’t produce this video to prove it. What’s that about? I can’t find information.

  • chhelo

    Just another black on white crime reversed to be politically correct. No strong armed robbery at the convenience store most likely no police activity and MB is still breathing today. Just a matter of time before MB would be in prison for robbery and assault or a similar fate for a confrontation with the law.

  • vnamvet1969

    My thoughts exactly. The wound pattern supports an attempt by the officer to stop the assault without a fatal shot.

  • http://www.federaleagent86.blogspot.com/ Federale

    Police officers are not trained to”wing” people when they shoot. They are trained to shoot center mass. Wilson’s shots were grouped to the left which is accountable to stress and the injury he sustained.

    • MLCBLOG

      Maybe.

  • Snafu-World

    Race- and victim-hood-hustlers can’t have their POVs both ways – activists like Eric Holder call Americans “cowards” for not discussing race relations / racism unless only on their terms which excludes, and is not limited to, any mention of or acknowledgement by blacks that they are in the main to blame for stifling debate on race issues in the sixty years since the Civil Rights Act, and insist on blaming white people solely for blacks many self-perpetuating problems.

    Admitting to and accepting responsibility for one’s problems is the first necessary step towards fixing them, but which black leaders and their supporters are loathe to ever do.

    • MLCBLOG

      …discussing race relations….this means, roughly translated, agreeing with everything they say.

  • MLCBLOG

    That’s good! Wilson rammed his eye into Brown’s fist. We do need a good sarcastic laugh once in a while.

    • Sheik Yerbouti

      It’s frustration really. I’m just amazed at the way this is unfolding. When one lie is exposed, another is instantly created to cover what the failed lie was shoring up. It’s especially insulting to see clergy driving the same lies which makes me think that race is more important than even God to some of them.

      I have noticed there has not been much talk from the autopsy about injuries to the Gentle Giant’s knuckles. The fix here is so obvious I think that cop might want to head to Brazil or Peru, especially with Holder wanting to legally gang rape the man. It’s all so sordid and disgusting and proves beyond a doubt that black Americans can be some of the most racist people I have ever seen.

  • PatnTrucks

    The newsies and our Black- Reverends-at-large try to be judge, jury and executioners before the facts are in – we’ve seen this before. The harsh truth does emerge over time, a proper investigation discloses this media-built hysterical fantasy sold to us early on. Why the newsies think that their holy opinion, half-assed conjectures and just plain yellow journalism loaded on with outright lies needs to be thrown on the nightly news up front. Impatience with, or disdain for, our legal procedures by the media and their ignoring that we are all ‘presumed innocent until convicted by a jury of our peers’ = this mess we now have on our hands.

  • Mike-Sandi Bodway

    After all the evidence came out I sat through 3 football games and watched movements of players as they charged forward. Taped these games so I could slow motion the moves. Evidence proves after three autopsies he was not shot in the back. But watching football player charge and their body movements support the evidence.

    We have trained special ops in this country who can kill with their bare hands. Martial arts are another way to put a hurting on someone without using a gun or any weapon. Face the facts. Michael used his size and strength to intimidate the store owner and the police officer. His adrenalin was flowing after the encounter with the store clerk. So the shear size and strength of Michael and his mental attitude toward the police could support the opposite of being unarmed.

    If a man strangles his wife to death with his bare hands, He was armed with his strength over her strength.