Michael Brown, Sr. is expected to announce today that he is calling for Wesley Bell, St. Louis County’s first Black prosecutor, to reopen the investigation into his namesake’s death at the hands of Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson.
On August 9, 2014, Wilson shot and killed 18-year old Michael Brown, Jr. in broad daylight in the middle of Canfield Drive, his body left in the middle of the street in sweltering heat for four hours.
The uprising that followed rocked the nation as Ferguson organizers and protesters demanded justice for Mike Brown and his family, a justice that would never come.
On November 24, 2014, St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch, a seven-term incumbent, announced that the grand jury had decided the street execution of Mike Brown was state-sanctioned and declined to indict Darren Wilson.
In March 2015, the Department of Justice, under the leadership of then-Attorney General Eric Holder, concluded that “Michael Brown’s death, though a tragedy, did not involve prosecutable conduct on the part of Officer Wilson.”
Brown Sr. and Lezley McSpadden, Mike Brown’s mother, who recently ran for Ferguson City Council, have never stopped fighting for justice for their son, and have never stopped honoring his life.
And, today, five years after the state slaying of his son, Brown Sr. is reaffirming that the 2014 grand jury will not have the last word in this case.