As a freshman, he was in Junior ROTC. His sophomore year he played football. During his junior year, he attended McCluer High School in the neighboring Ferguson-Florissant district before returning his senior year to Normandy. There, he spent time in a credit recovery program so he could graduate in May.

“We were at graduation, me and him, and we were talking,” said Hershel Johnson, a friend of Brown’s since middle school. “He said he wasn’t going to end up like some people on the streets. He was going to get an education. He was going to make his life a whole a lot better.”

Friends of Brown’s learned about his death shortly after he was shot Saturday afternoon. They saw photos of him lying in the street on Canfield Drive where his body remained for hours. Some joined the crowds of mourners and protesters who had gathered there since the shooting in protest of how Brown had died: black, unarmed and from multiple gunshots.

At one point, members of the crowd held up their hands, saying, “Don’t shoot me!” as police officers with barking dogs tried to keep order. St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said the officer’s gun was fired once inside the car during a struggle with Brown, hitting no one, and that the officer then fired multiple times at the 18-year-old as he ran away. Police say Brown tried to take the officer’s gun.