Friday marked the 10-year anniversary of the violent and tragic death of Michael Brown Jr., who was shot and killed by former Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014. Brown’s death represented one of the high-profile cases that became the catalyst of the Black Lives Matter movement, however, a full decade later, no one has been held criminally accountable for his death, and his mother, Lezley McSpadden said she’s still “waiting” for some semblance of justice.
“Emotional, sad, heartbreaking,” McSpadden said in an exclusive interview with GMA3’s DeMarco Morgan, “Waiting on the promises that were made by certain officials. And 10 years later those promises have just become broken promises.”
In July, McSpadden gave testimony before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR), which reviewed the case of her son’s killing in a public hearing.
From ABC News:
Lezley McSpadden, Brown’s mother, joined nonprofit organization Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and Howard University on a Zoom conference to petition the IACHR to recommend for United States prosecutors to criminally litigate Brown’s killing. Lawyers from the U.S. State Department and the Department of Justice also attended the hearing.
“The PTSD is overwhelming. I do have three remaining children. I was very scared and nervous to let them out of my sight for weeks after Mike was killed,” McSpadden said. “I received tons and tons of threatening letters. It got so bad where my lawyers had to look through my mail before I looked through it.”
“We will undoubtedly hear from the state a litany of all the things they have done to address the scourge of racist police violence in this country over the last 10 years, some of which I commend them for doing,” Kerry Kennedy, with RFK Human Rights, said at the conference. “Is it enough when more people were killed by police in 2023 than any other previously recorded year? The answer is no.”
Now, it’s 2024, and, still, no criminal charges have been brought against Wilson or anyone else, and it’s not looking any more likely that there will be than it did 10 years ago, although Brown’s family did receive a $1.5 million settlement in 2017 after they filed a lawsuit against the City of Ferguson.
“Wesley Bell promised to review the evidence and would never promise to file charges in any case. And he kept that promise by reviewing the evidence and making a public announcement that he would not file charges. At the end of the day, as was concluded by the DOJ and other investigative agencies, there is not sufficient evidence to justify any charges.”
“That’s kind of like my worst nightmare that came true,” Deja told GMA3 host DeMarco Morgan. “You always hear about Black males in the world just being killed for whatever reason, like, they don’t make it past 25.”
McSpadden said it was her sister, not the police, who first informed her that her son had been shot.
“I was at work,” McSpadden said. “She just said to me, ‘They shot Mike-Mike’ [Brown’s nickname]. Those were her only words to me. When I clicked over and say ‘Hello,’ my heart dropped.”
McSpadden said she heard even less from the officer who she spoke to after her co-worker gave her a ride to the scene where Brown was still lying dead in the street.
“I saw an officer standing there,” she said. “He’s never seen me. I’ve never seen him. And I asked him, ‘Is that my son? And he say, ‘yeah.’ And I can’t tell you anything that happened after that for probably 72 hours because I died for a second there. I just lost it. I couldn’t believe it. Why?”
The rest of the story, we know. Wilson claimed Michael attacked him and grabbed his gun before he opened fire, and all of boot-licker America immediately took his word for it. Investigators said they couldn’t disprove Wilson’s side of the story, and no evidence would support pressing criminal charges against him.
“I met mothers that didn’t look like me that experienced the same thing,” McSpadden told Morgan. “And what we did have in common was the communities that we came from. Poverty stricken, low-income housing, people that they think are uneducated. But I will say that it’s been outrageously done to those who look like you and I.”
Michael Brown, who would have been 28 in May, should still be here, and we haven’t forgotten about him. Even if no one is truly ever held accountable for his death, his name will forever hold a place in the modern civil rights movement.
Rest well, Mike-Mike—gone, but never forgotten.