Sunday, April 5, 2015

The Monte Carlo's driver did not see the police vehicle drive backwards

In her interview on August 9, the day of the incident, MC Owner told a story in which she was following very closely behind Police Officer Darren Wilson's police vehicle but did not see him back up and block the path of Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson. 
MC Owner  Leaving my apartment, coming up towards West Florissant, I was right behind the police officer. Two young men was walking in the middle of the street. .... They was walking towards the [Canfield Green] complex [i.e. walking east]. .... I was coming up towards West Florissant [i.e. driving west]. 
Detective  And you said there was a police officer in front of you?
MC Owner  Yes. .... It was a truck ... SUV.
Detective  How far behind this police officer were you?
MC Owner  Probably ten feet, at the most.
Detective  So..from that point, you're behind the police vehicle. You see these kids walking. Describe how they were walking down the street.
MC Owner  Actually, they was walking in the middle.
As the officer approached the two young men, I don't know what was said between the two parties, but I know something had to had been said -- just because basically the truck was moving back and forth, like there was kind of a tussling  going on.
Detective  Okay, just to make sure that have this correct: 
The truck is headed towards the gentlemen that are walking on the yellow line. Did the police officer's truck at any point stop?
MC Owner  Yes. For a short period of time. Yes. 
Detective  Do you know why that police officer had to stop his truck? 
MC Owner  Not to my knowledge, no. I didn't know why.
Detective  Where young men at when he stopped?
MC Owner  They were still proceeding to walk in the middle of the street.
Detective  Alright, so the police officer stopped, and he stopped right next to them? Did he stop in front of them, or did he stop once he passed them up? 
MC Owner  No, he stopped right on the side of them.
Detective  Once he stopped his vehicle, tell me what you saw.
MC Owner  Once he stopped his vehicle, I didn't hear or seen anything.  I just saw the one young man [Johnson] that was with him [Brown], with the deceased suspect. He [Johnson] was a brown-skinned guy. He was short, thin, with dreads.  
I saw him [Johnson] come in the back of the truck. He was like looking but didn't know what was going on. 
I saw the feet of somebody [Brown]. I looked up under the truck. I saw the feet moving, kind of tapping -- like, it was like some kind of confrontation going on.
Detective  Okay and the time when you saw this police vehicle, you said you saw it shaking from left to right?
MC Owner  Yeah.
[Pages 1 - 4]
MC Owner's statement that she was tail-gating Wilson at a distance of no more than ten feet is not plausible. If she actually were following so closely, then Wilson would not have been able to back up to block Brown's and Johnson's path. MC Owner seemed to be oblivious to the fact that Wilson backed up a considerable distance.

I speculate that MC Owner did not did not see Wilson back up because at that moment she was making her U-turn. Perhaps she turned around in Copper Creek Court. 


PV = Police Vehicle
MC = Monte Carlo
While MC Owner turned her Monte Carlo around in Copper Creek Court,
she did not see Wilson drive his police vehicle backward
in order to block Brown's and Johnson's path.
MC Owner decided to turn around because she saw in her rear-view mirror that the police vehicle stopped near Johnson and Brown. When she completed her U-turn and returned to Canfield Drive, she did not notice that the police vehicle had driven a considerable distance backward in the meantime. 

By the time she returned to Canfield Drive, Brown and Wilson already were struggling at the police vehicle's door. From their Coppercreek Court distance, MC Owner and MC Passenger (MC Owner did not mention her passenger to the detective on August 9) could indeed see, through the space underneath the police vehicle, Brown's feet moving. She saw the entire police vehicle shaking.  

Curious about Brown, MC Owner then drove her car slowly toward the police vehicle. Meanwhile, Johnson ran away laughing from the police vehicle. 

She stopped her Monte Carlo close to the police vehicle. She did not foresee any danger. She did not expect gunshots to be fired from inside the police vehicle.

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By the time MC Owner was interviewed by the detective on August 9, she already had talked with Johnson -- he sat in the Monte Carlo for a while -- so she knew that Wilson had stopped because Brown and Johnson were walking in the middle of the street. She knew more from Johnson than she knew from her personal experience of looking in her rear-view mirror and seeing the middle-of-the-street encounter from a distance.

She still did not, however, know the key detail that Wilson had backed his vehicle a considerable distance to block Brown's and Johnson's path. She herself had not seen that happen, and Johnson had not mentioned it to her when he told her about the incident. 

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