A key Ferguson witness whose testimony gave some of the most powerful support to Officer Darren Wilson’s version of the August 9 incident in which he killed 18-year-old Michael Brown, apparently lied — or at least concocted part of her story based on internet accounts of the tragic incident.
According to a report Wednesday in the Washington Post , the witness, a woman whose name was blacked out in the massive Ferguson shooting evidence file released by prosecutors Monday, described Michael Brown diving into Wilson’s police vehicle up to his waist, punching Wilson repeatedly, and later charging Wilson “like a football player, head down.”
But the witness also admitted to holding racially prejudiced views, telling prosecutors, “I have feelings that others consider to be racist, yes,” and acknowledging that she had much such comments as, “They need to kill the n*****s. It is like an ape fest.”
She also told prosecutors that she had a psychological condition she referred to as “mania,” and that she was “bi-polar.”
Finally, prosecutors were able to elicit an admission that her account of words exchanged between Wilson and Brown were not her own recollections, but simply regurgitation of accounts she had read on the internet.
Prosecutors also said that though they assembled a list of vehicles that passed through the area where Brown was killed that day, the woman’s own car was not among them — even though she said she drove to the neighborhood to visit a friend.
Despite all of these apparent red flags in the woman’s account of the Ferguson shooting, St. Louis County prosecutors called her in to testify before the grand jury investigating the killing of Michael Brown by Wilson — not once, but twice.
Wilson himself, in his own testimony , described his terror at the sight of Brown, whom he said was as big and intimidating as pro wrestler Hulk Hogan — even though Wilson and Brown were approximately the same height and Wilson weighed 210 pounds.
But in his alleged tussle with Brown, he felt “like a five year old” by comparison, Wilson told the grand jury.
After the altercation at Wilson’s vehicle, in which Brown was shot in the hand by Wilson, the unarmed teenager ran away and Wilson chased him. But prosecutors never asked Wilson why he did that.
Wilson himself volunteered an answer anyway, saying that Brown “still posed a threat, not only to me, but to anybody else that confronted him.”
The evidence file released Monday contained hundreds of pages of Ferguson witness testimony, in which witness accounts regularly contradict each other.