The nation is on edge, awaiting a grand jury decision in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown — an unarmed African American teen in Ferguson, Missouri — by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson more than three months ago. The decision is expected any day and there is widespread belief, based on weeks of leaks to the media and laws that historically favor police officers in lethal force cases, that Wilson will not be indicted. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has preemptively declared a state of emergency in anticipation of protests. Brown’s killing, the culmination of an incident that the St. Louis Post Dispatch would later report lasted no more than 90 seconds, devastated a family with high hopes for their college-bound son and sparked some of the most significant civil rights demonstrations in a generation — casting a harsh light on the disproportionate number of black men killed by police, on St. Louis County’s exploitative and racially discriminatory municipal court system, and on the militarization of law enforcement. In the months since Brown was killed, numerous eyewitnesses have come forward to describe what they saw during the teen’s final moments, while controversial disclosures to the press have served to describe Wilson’s version of the events that day. This is everything we know about the shooting. It was just past noon on August 9 when Wilson and Brown’s paths first crossed in Ferguson’s Canfield Green apartment complex. Wilson had just finished responding to a call regarding a sick infant. Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson, 22, were walking in a two-lane residential street when Wilson approached in his sport utility patrol vehicle and told them to get on the sidewalk. The precise details of what happened next have been at the center of months of protest and outrage. Most agree on the following: There was some sort of physical struggle between Brown and Wilson while Wilson was still in his vehicle; Brown ran from the confrontation; Wilson got out of the vehicle and fatally shot Brown at least six times from a distance; Brown was unarmed; and his bleeding body lay in the hot summer sun for four hours, much of that time uncovered, as the residents of Canfield looked upon his splayed-out corpse in horror. The Ferguson Police Department turned the investigation into Brown’s killing over to the larger St. Louis County Police Department almost immediately. The morning after Brown was killed, St. Louis County police chief Jon Belmar held a press conference. With protesters shouting in the background, Blemar told reporters that Brown “physically assaulted” an unnamed officer while the officer was in his vehicle. The teen was going for the officer’s gun, the police chief said.

“It is our understanding, at this point in the investigation, that there was a struggle over the officer’s weapon. There was at least one shot fired within the car,” Belmar said. While acknowledging that Brown was unarmed, Belmar said “more than a few” shell casings were found at the scene of the shooting but did not say how many times the officer fired, nor how many times Brown was hit. “It was more than just a couple, but I don’t think it was many more than that,” Belmar said of the shots fired. The shooting, he said, took place roughly 35 feet from the officer’s vehicle. Under Missouri state law, police officers are granted authority to use deadly force “in effecting an arrest or in preventing an escape from custody” if “he reasonably believes” it is necessary “to effect the arrest and also reasonably believes that the person to be arrested has committed or attempted to commit a felony…or may otherwise endanger life or inflict serious physical injury unless arrested without delay.” As an officer with the Ferguson Police Department, Wilson was also required to follow department guidelines on the use of force. In mid-October, The New York Times published an article previewing Wilson’s official version of events, as told to the grand jury during his four-hour testimony. The disclosures were, in essence, a repeat of claims Wilson’s employer and friends had been making for months: The police officer was going about his duties when he came across a teenager who attacked him through his window and tried to steal his gun. As the story went, during the ordeal Wilson thought he might be killed so, after the teen took off running, Wilson got out of his vehicle and shot him to death. Citing unnamed “government officials briefed on the federal civil rights investigation into the” shooting, the Times reported that two shots, not one, as previously reported, were fired inside Wilson’s vehicle and that Brown’s blood was splashed across on the interior panel of the SUV, as well as Wilson’s gun and uniform. According to the paper, “Wilson told the authorities that Mr. Brown had punched and scratched him repeatedly, leaving swelling on his face and cuts on his neck.” The fact that Wilson testified was telling. He was not legally required to do so, and in most grand jury cases defendants do not testify because their attorney cannot be present. This move, some suggested, was an indication that Wilson and his legal counsel felt the proceedings would work to his favor. Wilson’s decision to testify wasn’t the only unorthodox thing about the grand jury proceedings. In addition, St. Louis County’s top prosecutor, Robert P. McCulloch, opted to have the grand jurors decide what charges, if any, to file against Wilson. Those charges could include murder or manslaughter. From the beginning, however, a first-degree murder charge has been considered unlikely, as it would require proving Wilson harbored a malicious intent to kill Brown. A second-degree murder charge, meanwhile, could be overcome if Wilson could successfully argue that he was in fear for his life or the lives of others at the time of the incident, and it was clear early on that Wilson would argue that he feared for his life. Wilson could face lesser charges, like voluntary or involuntary manslaughter, if the jurors find that he was negligent in the shooting. In the secretive process of a grand jury, a prosecutor wields considerable power to influence the determination of the jurors on the question of whether or not to indict. Critics argued that by shifting this responsibility to the jurors in the Brown case, presenting them with all of the witnesses and evidence in the investigation and effectively asking the 12 citizens on the panel, including three African-Americans, to make up their own minds, McCulloch was making a half-hearted attempt to secure an indictment while simultaneously insulating himself from any criticism if Wilson walked. McCulloch also turned over the bulk of the work in the case to two veteran prosecutors from his office, further distancing himself from the day-to-day proceedings. For weeks, protesters and supporters of the Brown family, as well as elected officials, rallied to have McCulloch removed from the case, arguing that he had a longstanding history, rooted in personal trauma, of protecting police officers in use-of-force cases. McCulloch’s father was a police officer killed in the line of duty, 50 years before Brown was gunned down, by a black man who stole his gun. Several of McCulloch’s family members, including his mother, brother, uncle, and cousin, have worked for the St. Louis Police Department. McCulloch himself had a long hoped to join the force, but after losing his leg to cancer in high school he decided to become a prosecutor. “I couldn’t become a policeman, so being county prosecutor is the next best thing,” he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In 2001, McCulloch oversaw a particularly controversial fatal shooting case in which two unarmed black men, caught up in a small-time drug sting, were shot 21 times in broad daylight by undercover officers at a Jack In the Box drive-through. In presenting the case to the grand jury, McCulloch said the men pulled forward at the officers, prompting them to open fire. The jurors decided not to indict the officers–who both testified–based on the evidence McCulloch presented. “These guys were bums,” McCulloch said of the deceased. The case became a flashpoint of racial tension that has been seared in the minds of many members of St. Louis County’s African American communities ever since. A subsequent investigation by The St. Louis Post Dispatch found that only three of the 13 officers involved in the sting said the vehicle moved forward; the two officers who shot and a third officer whose testimony McCulloch later described as “completely wrong.”

Outside the secretive confines of the grand jury, the accounts of multiple eyewitnesses to the shooting, relayed through the media and typically contradictory to the official police account, played a major role in driving the anger over Brown’s killing. As far as evidence goes, eyewitness testimony is far from perfect. According to the Innocence Project, a non-profit that has secured the release of hundreds of wrongfully convicted people over the last two decades, “eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in 72% of convictions overturned through DNA testing.” Fallibility aside, the relative consistency of basic facts in the eyewitness accounts to Brown’s killing — combined with a history of racially biased, violent policing in many of St. Louis County’s African-American neighborhoods — fueled weeks of outrage. A refusal on the part of local authorities to release key pieces of information to the public made matters worse. On August 12, three days after Brown was killed, Johnson, the friend who was with him at the time of his death, gave a detailed description of the shooting to the press. Similar accounts soon followed. Johnson said that when Wilson rolled up in his patrol vehicle, he told the two to “get the fuck onto the sidewalk” and that they responded by saying that they were nearing their destination. According to Johnson, Wilson, who had apparently continued past them, slammed on his brakes and reversed in their direction, pulling up so close that when he attempted to open his driver’s side door it slammed into Brown and remained closed. Johnson claimed that there was a “tug of war” struggle between Brown and Wilson, with Wilson grabbing at Brown’s neck—“[Brown]did not reach for a weapon at all,” Johnson said. Johnson said Wilson told Brown “I’ll shoot” and that a shot went off while Wilson was in the vehicle. Johnson thought Brown might have been hit by the first shot, as blood was beginning to soak through Brown’s shirt on his right side. According to Johnson, he and Brown took off running after the first shot. Wilson stepped out of his vehicle. Johnson ducked behind a car and Brown continued on. Johnson said Wilson’s second shot struck Brown in the back and that the teen then turned around with his hands up and said, “I don’t have a gun, stop shooting!” Wilson fired several more shots, Johnson said, and Brown fell to the concrete curled into a fetal position. Johnson’s attorney later said his client recalled that Brown’s hands were not held high, that one was lower than the other because he seemed to be “favoring it.” One day after Johnson’s first interview, Tiffany Mitchell, 27, came forward to describe what she saw that afternoon on Canfield Drive. In multiple interviews, with local news outlets, MSNBC, and CNN, Mitchell said that she too witnessed a physical struggle between Brown and Wilson through Wilson’s window and that a shot went off while Wilson was still inside the vehicle. That shot, she said, was fired while Brown’s hands were on the outside of the vehicle, in what she believed was the teen’s effort to push himself away from the officer. Mitchell claimed that after the first shot Brown managed to break away and took off running. Wilson got out of his vehicle, she said, and fired more shots. Mitchell said that at one point Brown jerked, as if he may have been shot, and that’s when he turned around and faced Wilson. “After the shot, the kid just breaks away. The cop follows him, kept shooting, the kid’s body jerked as if he was hit. After his body jerked he turns around, puts his hands up, and the cop continues to walk up on him and continues to shoot until he goes all the way down,” Mitchell told a local TV news outlet. Mitchell was in the Canfield complex to pick up her coworker, Piaget Crenshaw, 19, who also witnessed the shooting. Crenshaw told the Post-Dispatch that Brown’s hands were in the air when he attempted to flee from Wilson. From her apartment, Crenshaw shot cell phone video depicting the moments immediately following the shooting. Crenshaw shared her video with CNN. The video showed a dazed Wilson, wearing his blue Ferguson police uniform, pacing around Brown’s body. Crenshaw told CNN that she believed she saw Wilson attempting to pull Brown into his vehicle but failed and Brown got away. “It just seemed to have upset the officer,” Crenshaw said. She said Wilson then exited his vehicle and was “chasing after” Brown. She said multiple shots were fired and said she believed one might have grazed Brown. “At the end [Brown] just turned around, after I’m guessing he felt the bullet graze his arm, he turned around then was shot multiple times,” Crenshaw said. Darren Wilson was identified as the officer who killed Michael Brown on August 15, three days after Johnson came forward and nearly a full week after the shooting took place. The police had initially said he would be identified earlier, but changed course and decided to keep his name secret for several additional days, pointing to concerns for Wilson’s safety. That same day, the police also revealed the existence of surveillance camera footage that purported to show Brown and Johnson stealing a box of cigars from a local convenience store. Since Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson acknowledged that Wilson’s initial decision to stop Brown and Johnson had nothing to do with the alleged strong-arm robbery, Brown’s parents and supporters argued that the release of the video–which the Department of Justice protested–was a blatant attempt at character assassination. Rep. William Lacy Clay of St. Louis said McCulloch’s office was attempting to influence the jury. “Bob McCulloch tried to taint the jury pool by the stunt he pulled today,” the congressman told the Post-Dispatch. “I have no faith in him, but I do trust the FBI and the Justice Department.”