Dorin Johnson, a friend of the victim, told Fox 2 that he was walking in the street with Brown when the police squad car pulled up. The officer said to "Get the eff onto the sidewalk," he recounted.



"It was not but a minute from our destination and we would be off the street," Johnson said.



Johnson said the officer didn't get out of his police car, but "reach[ed] his arm out the window and grabbed my friend around the neck."



"I witnessed the police chase after the guy, full force," Piaget Crenshaw said. "He ran for his life. They shot him and he fell. He put his arms up to let them know that he was compliant and he was unarmed and they shot him twice more and he fell to the ground and died."



A crowd of some 200 people gathered at the site of the shooting on Saturday, some of them shouting "kill the police" and yelling profanities, a county police spokesman said.



"Emotions were running very high," Belmar said.



St. Louis County police said Brown was unarmed and they would turn over investigation findings of what happened in Ferguson, northwest of St. Louis, to local prosecutors.



Brown's mother told local TV broadcaster KSDK that her son was a good child getting ready to go to college and was visiting his grandmother when the incident took place.



"He didn't bother nobody," she said. "They told me how many times my son was shot - eight," she added, and then directed her comments at police.



"You not God. You not decide you are going to take somebody from her," she said in an interview with KSDK.



The St Louis County branch of the civil rights group NAACP has said it wants the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to look into the case, with many in the community telling media that race played a factor in the shooting.



The race of the officer was not released.



Reuters, Los Angeles Times



