Video raises questions over shot teen’s death
NEW surveillance footage has emerged of black teenager Michael Brown suggesting he had not, in fact, robbed a Ferguson, Missouri, convenience store hours before he was shot by a white police officer.
Brown’s 2014 death sparked weeks of sometimes violent protests and ignited a national debate about race relations and law enforcement in the United States.
The new video, used in the documentary Stranger Fruit that premiered on Saturday at the South by Southwest film festival, suggests Brown’s altercation with store employees in a separate visit to the shop was tied to a suspected drug transaction with shop employees.
In the video, dated 1.15am on August 9 2014, Brown can be seen handing a small bag over the counter, which employees pass around and smell before a shop assistant gives Brown two large boxes of cigarillos.
Just before leaving, Brown returned to the counter and asked the assistant to keep the bag with the cigarillos behind the counter.
Some 10½ hours later, when Brown returns to the store, video footage shows him standing with his arms behind his back.
He reaches over the counter and grabs the boxes of cigarillos. On his way out of the store, he shoves an assistant out of his way.
Stranger Fruit director Jason Pollock, who obtained the new footage, says it contradicts Ferguson police’s version of the events.
In the film, he said Brown gave a small bag of dagga to store employees and received cigarillos in exchange, and that he had left the cigarillos behind the counter for safekeeping.
“There was an understanding, and that’s what you are going to see in that video,” Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, said.
“There was some type of exchange. One thing for another.”
Pollock said: “Mike did not rob the store.”
A lawyer representing the convenience store and its employees disputed that account.
“There was no transaction,” Jay Kanzler said.
“There was no understanding. No agreement. Those folks didn’t sell him cigarillos for pot.
“He was walking out the door with unpaid merchandise and they wanted it back.”
The new video does not shed light on the subsequent and ultimately fatal altercation between Brown and police officer Darren Wilson.
Brown’s killing was among a series of deaths which exposed entrenched problems with US police tactics and black men.
The event sparked mass protests and helped launch the Black Lives Matter activist movement against law enforcement violence seen as racist.