Why was Michael Brown shot?

On August 9, 2014, Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old. It will never be perfectly clear what happened on that day. But the grand jury and US Department of Justice didn’t believe there was enough evidence to file charges against Wilson for wrongdoing.

Wilson claimed Brown was violent throughout the encounter, even charging at the officer after gunshots were fired. But some eyewitness testimony, which is notoriously unreliable, said Brown was trying to flee from Wilson and attempted to surrender — by raising his hands up — before he was killed.

After Wilson made contact with Brown and told the 18-year-old to not walk in the middle of the road, the officer reportedly realized Brown was a robbery suspect who stole cigarillos from a nearby convenience store. Wilson attempted to stop Brown, and both men had a physical altercation at the officer’s SUV. Wilson then opened fire from his vehicle. Brown ran, turned around, and Wilson fired more shots, supposedly out of fear that Brown was charging at him.

Brown died about 150 feet from Wilson’s vehicle. He was shot six times. No gunshot was confirmed to hit Brown from behind, although two wounds had an undetermined trajectory.

An investigation from the Justice Department laid out a strong case in Wilson’s favor. The physical evidence suggested Brown reached into Wilson’s car during their physical altercation and, very likely, attempted to grab the officer’s gun. The most credible witnesses agreed that Brown moved toward Wilson before the officer fired his final shots — and there simply wasn’t enough evidence, especially given the struggle at the car, that Wilson wasn’t justified in fearing for his life when he fired the shots that killed Brown. Although some credible witnesses suggested Brown raised his hands up before he died, witnesses who disputed major parts of Wilson’s side of the story were discredited by the physical evidence and when they changed their accounts.

One of the major sources of confusion in this case is that a lot of the eyewitness testimony was contradictory. PBS NewsHour parsed through the eyewitness accounts, compiling them all in one chart: