Demonstrators are confronted by police as they block a street during a protest ahead of the grand jury announcement on November 24, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
18 December 14
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grand jury witness who testified that she saw Michael Brown pummel a
cop before charging at him “like a football player, head down,” is a
troubled, bipolar Missouri woman with a criminal past who has a history
of making racist remarks and once insinuated herself into another
high-profile St. Louis criminal case with claims that police eventually
dismissed as a “complete fabrication,” The Smoking Gun has learned.
In interviews with police, FBI agents, and federal and
state prosecutors--as well as during two separate appearances before
the grand jury that ultimately declined to indict Officer Darren
Wilson--the purported eyewitness delivered a preposterous and perjurious
account of the fatal encounter in Ferguson.
Referred to only as “Witness 40” in grand jury
material, the woman concocted a story that is now baked into the
narrative of the Ferguson grand jury, a panel before which she had no
business appearing.
While the “hands-up” account of Dorian Johnson is
often cited by those who demanded Wilson’s indictment, “Witness 40”’s
testimony about seeing Brown batter Wilson and then rush the cop like a
defensive end has repeatedly been pointed to by Wilson supporters as
directly corroborative of the officer’s version of the August 9
confrontation. The “Witness 40” testimony, as Fox News sees it, is proof
that the 18-year-old Brown’s killing was justified, and that the
Ferguson grand jury got it right.
However, unlike Johnson, “Witness 40”--a 45-year-old
St. Louis resident named Sandra McElroy--was nowhere near Canfield Drive
on the Saturday afternoon Brown was shot to death.
Though prosecutors have sought to cloak the identity
of grand jury witnesses, a TSG investigation has identified McElroy as
“Witness 40.” A careful analysis of information contained in the
unredacted portions of “Witness 40”’s grand jury testimony helped
reporters identify McElroy and then conclusively match up details of her
life with those of “Witness 40.”
TSG examined criminal, civil, matrimonial, and
bankruptcy court records, as well as online postings and comments to
unmask McElroy as “Witness 40,” the fabulist whose grand jury testimony
and law enforcement interviews are deserving of multi-count perjury
indictments.
McElroy did not reply to an e-mail seeking comment
about her testimony. Messages sent yesterday to her three Facebook pages
also went unanswered. Also, a message left on a phone number linked to
McElroy was not returned.
Since the identities of grand jurors--as well as
details of their deliberations--remain secret, there is no way of
knowing what impact McElroy’s testimony had on members of the panel,
which subsequently declined to vote indictments against Wilson. That
decision touched off looting and arson in Ferguson, about 30 miles from
the apartment the divorced McElroy shares with her three daughters.
Sandra McElroy did not provide police with a
contemporaneous account of the Brown-Wilson confrontation, which she
claimed to have watched unfold in front of her as she stood on a nearby
sidewalk smoking a cigarette.
Instead, McElroy (seen at left) waited four weeks
after the shooting to contact cops. By the time she gave St. Louis
police a statement on September 11, a general outline of Wilson’s
version of the shooting had already appeared in the press. McElroy’s
account of the confrontation dovetailed with Wilson’s reported
recollection of the incident.
In the weeks after Brown’s shooting--but before she
contacted police--McElroy used her Facebook account to comment on the
case. On August 15, she “liked’ a Facebook comment
reporting that Johnson had admitted that he and Brown stole cigars
before the confrontation with Wilson. On August 17, a Facebook commenter
wrote that Johnson and others should be arrested for inciting riots and
giving false statements to police in connection with their claims that
Brown had his hands up when shot by Wilson. “The report and autopsy are in so YES they were false,”
McElroy wrote of the “hands-up” claims. This appears to be an odd
comment from someone who claims to have been present during the
shooting. In response to the posting of a news report about a rally in
support of Wilson, McElroy wrote on August 17, “Prayers, support God Bless Officer Wilson.”
After meeting with St. Louis police, McElroy continued
monitoring the case and posting online. Commenting on a September 12
Riverfront Times story reporting that Ferguson city officials had yet to
meet with Brown’s family, McElroy wrote,
“But haven’t you heard the news, There great great great grandpa may or
may not have been owned by one of our great great great grandpas 200
yrs ago. (Sarcasm).” On September 13, McElroy went on a pro-Wilson
Facebook page and posted a graphic
that included a photo of Brown lying dead in the street. A type overlay
read, “Michael Brown already received justice. So please, stop asking
for it.” The following week McElroy responded
to a Facebook post about the criminal record of Wilson’s late mother.
“As a teenager Mike Brown strong armed a store used drugs hit a police
officer and received Justis,” she stated.
On October 22, McElroy went to the FBI field office in
St. Louis and was interviewed by an agent and two Department of Justice
prosecutors. The day before that taped meeting, the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch published a lengthy story detailing exactly what Wilson told police investigators about the Ferguson shooting.
McElroy provided the federal investigators with an
account that neatly tracked with Wilson’s version of the fatal
confrontation. She claimed to have seen Brown and Johnson walking in the
street before Wilson encountered them while seated in his patrol car.
She said that the duo shoved the cruiser’s door closed as Wilson sought
to exit the vehicle, then watched as Brown leaned into the car and began
raining punches on the cop. McElroy claimed that she heard gunfire from
inside the car, which prompted Brown and Johnson to speed off. As Brown
ran, McElroy said, he pulled up his sagging pants, from which “his rear
end was hanging out.”
But instead of continuing to flee, Brown stopped and
turned around to face Wilson, McElroy said. The unarmed teenager, she
recalled, gave Wilson a “What are you going to do about it look,” and
then “bent down in a football position…and began to charge at the
officer.” Brown, she added, “looked like he was on something.” As Brown
rushed Wilson, McElroy said, the cop began firing. The “grunting”
teenager, McElroy recalled, was hit with a volley of shots, the last of
which drove Brown “face first” into the roadway.
McElroy’s tale was met with skepticism by the
investigators, who reminded her that it was a crime to lie to federal
agents. When questioned about inconsistencies in her story, McElroy was
resolute about her vivid, blow-by-blow description of the deadly
Brown-Wilson confrontation. “I know what I seen,” she said. “I know you
don’t believe me.”
When asked what she was doing in Ferguson--which is
about 30 miles north of her home--McElroy explained that she was
planning to “pop in” on a former high school classmate she had not seen
in 26 years. Saddled with an incorrect address and no cell phone,
McElroy claimed that she pulled over to smoke a cigarette and seek
directions from a black man standing under a tree. In short order, the
violent confrontation between Brown and Wilson purportedly played out in
front of McElroy.
Despite an abundance of red flags, state prosecutors
put McElroy in front of the Ferguson grand jury the day after her
meeting with the federal officials. After the 12-member panel listened
to a tape of her interview conducted at the FBI office, McElroy appeared
and, under oath, regaled the jurors with her eyewitness claims.
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