Page:DOJ Report on Shooting of Michael Brown.djvu/76

 Witness 148 pulled her vehicle into a nearby parking lot and parked because she wanted to see what would happen next. She told her four-year-old son to wait in her car while she got out of her vehicle and watched as Brown and Wilson engaged in a struggle on the driver side of the SUV. Witness 148 stated her that her vantage point was of the passenger side of the SUV, but she could nonetheless see Brown using his hands to push off the driver's door as Wilson pulled Brown toward the SUV. She heard Brown repeatedly state, "I didn't do anything," as Wilson stated, "Stop resisting." Despite being in a parking lot and on the opposite side of the SUV as Brown, Witness 148 stated that Brown "looked scared and it's not like he's a giant or anything." Witness 148 also stated that Brown never put his hands inside the SUV window, despite forensic and physical evidence to the contrary. However, she ultimately acknowledged to prosecutors that because she could not see the driver's side of the SUV, she did not know whether Brown put his hands inside the SUV window.

According to Witness 148, her son then got out of her vehicle because he wanted to watch what was happening. Witness 148 heard a gunshot. Witness 148 got down on the grass and covered her child's body with her own to protect him. While doing so, she watched Witness 101 and then Brown run from the SUV. After that, Witness 101 disappeared and she never saw him again. Wilson then emerged from the SUV and fired at least two shots. Brown flinched, arching his body back as though the bullet had "grazed" him. Brown then turned around and put his hands up in right angles at shoulder-height in a sign of surrender. He then dropped to his knees, and started to say something like, "I don't have a -," but was cut off as Wilson walked toward Brown firing at least six shots, killing Brown. Witness 148 described Wilson as "possessed" based on the "look in his eyes," as though "he wasn't human." It is unclear based on Witness 148's description how she was able to see both the look in Wilson's eyes and Brown trying to speak as he was surrendering, all at the same time.

Witness 148 was initially adamant that, contrary to DNA evidence in the roadway and credible witness accounts that establish otherwise, Brown never moved forward from the spot where he turned around to face Wilson. When prosecutors specifically asked her about this, Witness 148 acknowledged that because he son was squirming on the ground and she feared for his safety, her attention may have been diverted during the shooting, and therefore she may have missed parts of it. Nonetheless, she repeated that Wilson shot Brown as he was "surrendering." When prosecutors and agents pressed Witness 148 as to why it took her nearly seven months to come forward and report what she witnessed, she explained that she feared the FPD. She maintained that she did not tell anyone – "not one living soul" – about what she witnessed on August 9, 2014. Witness 148 stated however, that she was she was not going to live in fear and therefore went to Ferguson every day since the shooting until the day of the county grand jury's decision on November 24, 2014. She protested and marched, but never shared with anyone what she witnessed, including her god-daughter who started a "Michael Brown movement." However, Witness 148 met a close friend of the Brown family after a Martin Luther King Day protest. Several weeks after that, she told the friend what she had witnessed and ultimately met with Brown's mother. Witness 148 explained that as a mother herself, she wanted to share with Brown's mother what happened to Brown.