A guy named Dorian Johnson was with Mike Brown when this happened. I posted a link to a YouTube video of his account of the incident on the first breaking news thread.
Since then he has spoken directly to the media. And what bothers me about him is that his story has changed. He said in the video that Brown was wearing flip flops and so couldn’t run. Pictures of Brown’s body in the street clearly show that he was not wearing flip flops. In the video he said nothing about the cop putting a choke hold on Brown. He’s since added that to his story. In the video he says the cop walked up to Brown while Brown was lying on the street and fired four more times. That has since disappeared from his story.
In my experience, eyewitness testimony is most accurate right after an incident and while details may be massaged somewhat in subsequent re-tellings or some insignificant details added, generally speaking, true stories don’t change much. Not so with Dorian Johnson.
I hope the FBI uses the tried-and-true tactic of having Johnson tell his story backwards to filter out his embellishments. Just like watching someone’s eyes move up and to his left when he’s recalling an actual event or up and to his right if he’s lying, having him tell events from end to beginning reveals the truth unless he is a pathological liar.
That is why he wouldn’t talk to investigators right away and went straight to CNN. A trained and expert interrogator would tear his story to shreds. They are good.