Rest In Peace: Dorian Johnson, Activist & Witness To Michael Brown Shooting, Killed In Ferguson

Michael Brown’s death at the hands of police officers in Ferguson, Missouri, set the nation ablaze both literally and figuratively. Protests, public demonstrations, marches on highways, and volatile outrage broke out in several cities, but especially in St. Louis, which is only 12 miles from the scene of the incident. The day Brown was killed, he was walking to the store with his friend Dorian Johnson. According to KSDK, the 33-year-old was shot approximately 1,000 feet from where Brown took his final breath. Johnsons was subsequently taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

When news of Johnson’s death broke, word spread that police were involved in the shooting, but those rumors were put to rest when police made an arrest of a potential suspect and applied for criminal charges.

NewsOne via The Washington Post reported on Johnson’s recounting of Brown’s death that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement and the protest mantra “Hands up! Don’t shoot!”

“He put his hands in the air,” Johnson said of Brown in his final moments. “He started to get down, but the officer still approached with his weapon drawn. And he fired several more shots. And my friend died.”

NewsOne also noted the disturbing trend of activists from Ferguson who have died following Michael Brown’s killing.

Deandre Joshua, 20, was found in a torched car with a gunshot wound to the head in November 2014. Nearly two years later, 29-year-old Darren Seals was found dead inside a burning car in September 2016, his body riddled with bullets. Police said MarShawn McCarrel, a Ferguson activist originally from Ohio, shot himself on the steps of the Ohio Statehouse in February 2016

Johnson filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city of Ferguson, former police officer Darren Wilson, and the former Chief of Police. That suit was ultimately dismissed in 2019 by an appeals court.

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