New video raises questions about Michael Brown’s last hours

FERGUSON, Missouri — Unedited early-hours store video footage of Michael Brown on the day he was fatally shot by a white police officer has been released by a lawyer for the store.

The lawyer for the Ferguson, Missouri, convenience store and a prosecutor who handled the case are disputing a new documentary’s claim that its footage proves Brown didn’t steal from the store before his August 2014 death.

St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch says the “Stranger Fruit” documentary footage was heavily edited from the original to distort what really happened.

The filmmakers allege Brown while inside Ferguson Market & Liquor in the early hours of Aug. 9, 2014, traded marijuana for cigarillos he was later accused of stealing. They claim he left the cigarillos behind and returned to retrieve them up later that day, just minutes before he was killed in a neighborhood nearby.

The full footage shows the 18-year-old Brown, who was black, about to leave with a bag containing a couple of drinks and two boxes of cigarillos. He talks to the store workers, then gives the bag to a clerk and leaves without it.

The video shows the clerk return the boxes to the shelf, and another worker taking the drinks back to a cooler.

Shortly after Brown’s death, local police had released security-camera video of Brown visiting the same store in the daytime, a few minutes before he was shot. That footage, which now appears to depict the second of two visits to the Ferguson Market and Liquor store by Brown within a span of a few hours, showed Brown pushing a worker before walking out with cigarillos in an apparent robbery.

Brown’s family and protesters had criticized the release of the video as an effort to demonize the teenager.

Witnesses have given conflicting accounts of Brown’s deadly encounter a short time later with police officer Darren Wilson. Local and federal investigations cleared Wilson of criminal wrongdoing.

The new video, which appears in the documentary “Stranger Fruit,” an extract of which was published by the Times, shows Brown in an earlier, seemingly more amicable exchange. The documentary had its world premiere Saturday at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.

It shows Brown giving store employees what appears to be a small bag, the contents of which the staff pass around and sniff. One employee gives Brown two boxes of cigarillos in a carrier bag.

Brown takes a few steps away before turning back and handing the bag back to an employee who appears to stash it behind the counter.

Jason Pollock, the documentary filmmaker, said the video shows Brown exchanging marijuana for cigarillos and undermines the police account that Brown may have robbed the store.

“Mike traded the store a little bag of weed and got two boxes of cigarillos in return,” Pollock says in the documentary. “He left his items at the store and he went back the next day to pick them up. Mike did not rob the store.”

Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, also appears in the documentary, saying, “There was some type of exchange, for one thing, for another.”

Jay Kanzler, a lawyer for the convenience store, was quoted by the Times as disputing the filmmaker’s explanation, saying the store did not exchange anything with Brown.

“The reason he gave it back is he was walking out the door with unpaid merchandise and they wanted it back,” Kanzler was quoted as saying. He did not respond to a request for comment.

A crowd of about 100 protesters, who saw the video as exonerating Brown, gathered on Sunday night at the convenience store which was protected by a couple of hundred police officers.

The protest was largely peaceful, although police were seen arresting at least two people, and an unknown person fired about half a dozen bullets into the air towards the end of the protest.