Dorian Johnson, who was with Michael Brown when the Black 18-year-old was shot dead by a white police officer in a 2014 Missouri shooting that triggered nationwide protests, was killed in a shooting sunday, authorities said.
The killing of Brown on Aug. 9, 2014, in Ferguson fueled demonstrations around the country in which people chanted, “Hands up, don’t shoot." Johnson witnessed the shooting and told media outlets what he saw.
Johnson was fatally shot sunday morning, also in Ferguson, authorities said.
st. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Melissa Price smith said Johnson's killing “appears to be a domestic incident involving a claim of self-defense.”
One person was arrested but released after a maximum hold time of 24 hours expired without charges, she said.
“The investigation remains active,” smith said in a statement. "The Ferguson Police Department is engaged in ongoing consultation with the st. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office regarding possible criminal charges. We will announce any charging decisions made regarding this matter of evident public interest."
Ferguson police said that officers arrived at Abaco Drive in response to a call for shots fired at approximately 8:30 a.m. sunday and that one unnamed man died.
That person was found shot when officers arrived and was pronounced dead at a hospital, NBC affiliate KsDK of st. Louis reported. No officers were involved in any shooting, police said.
Police said Monday that responding officers quickly took one person into custody. The prosecutor’s office said that person was released when no charges had been filed within the maximum holding period.
Johnson told KsDK after Brown was killed that Brown was “shot like an animal” by a police officer who approached the pair for no apparent reason while they were on their way home.
Police at the time said Brown was shot after a physical confrontation between Brown and the officer, Darren Wilson.
Wilson resigned after the shooting but was not criminally charged. A grand jury declined to indict him in the case, and the Department of Justice also declined to charge him after a civil rights investigation.
The DOJ said prosecutors couldn’t disprove Wilson’s testimony that he feared for his life when he shot Brown. It also said it could not prove claims that Brown had his hands up before he was shot, and that some witnesses later recanted on that detail.
Then-st. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell also said in 2020 that he would not charge Wilson after his office's review of witness interviews and other evidence.
"The question for this office was a simple one: Could we prove beyond a reasonable doubt that when Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown he committed murder or manslaughter under Missouri law? After an independent and in-depth review of the evidence, we cannot prove that he did,” Bell said at the time.
The Department of Justice did find that there existed a pattern of racially biased policing in Ferguson, a suburb of st. Louis, and that there was a focus on generating revenue for the city through violations at the expense of residents' rights of due process and equal protection.
The city agreed to a consent decree with the Justice Department in 2016.
