Smoking Gun had
dug up some fascinatingly damning facts about a witness before
the Ferguson grand jury whose alleged eyewitness report matched
Officer Darren Wilson’s pretty thoroughly.
Turns out “Witness 40” may not have even been on the site of the
murder of Michael Brown, and has a record of insinuating herself
into cases she has nothing to do with, and has some decidedly
curious attitudes about race.
Some details:
“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.
Smoking Gun insists it has identified this witness as
“a 45-year-old St. Louis resident named Sandra McElroy”—and
that McElroy herself confirmed this after their initial report
appeared. They also insist that available evidence indicates she
“was nowhere near Canfield Drive on the Saturday afternoon Brown
was shot to death.”
The details are all weird and should have raised red flags
even to the police—for example, that she didn’t contact police
until four weeks after the event, after Wilson’s version of it was
already available for her to corroborate if she wished. She had
been making pro-police comments on her Facebook page before then,
and not saying she was an eyewitness to the event.
Best Facebook detail:
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.”
And how did Ms. McElroy, who lived 30 miles away from the street
where Michael Brown was shot and killed, happen to be there?
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…..McElroy’s grand jury testimony came to an abrupt end at 2:30
that afternoon due to obligations of some grand jurors. But before
the panel broke for the day, McElroy revealed that, “On August 9th
after this happened when I got home, I wrote everything down
on a piece of paper, would that be easier if I brought that
in?”“Sure,” answered prosecutor Kathi Alizadeh……
Her reason for allegedly being on the scene changed by her next
appearance before the grand jury, though:
Before testifying about the content of her notebook
scribblings, McElroy admitted that she had not driven to Ferguson
in search of an African-American pal she had last seen in 1988.
Instead, McElroy offered a substitute explanation that was,
remarkably, an even bigger lie.McElroy, again under oath, explained to grand jurors that she
was something of an amateur urban anthropologist. Every couple of
weeks, McElroy testified, she likes to “go into all the
African-American neighborhoods.” During these weekend
sojourns–apparently conducted when her ex has the kids–McElroy
said she will “go in and have coffee and I will strike up a
conversation with an African-American and I will try to talk to
them because I’m trying to understand more.”
What follows seems like a bad joke:
The opening entry in McElroy’s journal on the day Brown died
declared, “Well Im gonna take my random drive to Florisant. Need to
understand the Black race better so I stop calling Blacks N*****s
[my edit] and Start calling them People.” A commendable goal,
indeed.
The story also details an earlier police case in which Ms.
McElroy tried to insert herself, which resulted in police
announcing that “We
have found that [her] story is a complete fabrication.”
It almost makes one wonder if Ms. McElroy saw the shooting of
Brown by Wilson at all. But the grand jury knew things that rest of
us didn’t, I suppose.
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