Michael Brown shooting: ‘I have clean conscience because I know I did my job right,’ says Ferguson police officer who fired fatal shots

Victims parents label prime-time TV interview 'disrespectful' and an 'insult after injury'

It’s not just that he had never killed a man before. Darren Wilson, the police officer at the heart of the storm in Ferguson, Missouri, hadn’t even fired his weapon before, except in training.

That is the verifiable part of his version of what happened on 9 August this year, when a 90-second encounter with a young black man on the streets of the St Louis suburb ended in gunfire and death and America found itself plunged anew into a maelstrom of anguish about race and civil rights. But watching Mr Wilson recall with almost clinical detachment those tragic moments in an interview with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, released by the network in three parts on Tuesday and Wednesday evening, it was hard to discern the real from rehearsed, the sincere from scripted.

That night and everything else would surely be traumatising for any young man. He has been and remains in hiding since that night. Mr Wilson, who is 28, acknowledged feeling “shock” the instant he realised the man he had been shooting, Michael Brown, was dead, but he didn’t evince any of that for the cameras. “Isn’t that a moment that will haunt you for ever,?” Mr Stephanopoulos asked. “I don’t think it’s haunting; it’s always going to be something that happened,” the young man said. He agreed to do the interview even as his town was once more in the grip of violence unleashed by the grand jury decision. “The reason I have a clean conscience is because I did my job right.”

The parents of Mr Brown blasted Mr Wilson for giving the interview at all. In a joint appearance on CBS, his mother, Lesley McSpadden, became emotional, asking why Officer Wilson had done the prime-time interview which neither she nor her ex-husband had watched. “So disrespectful,” she said, saying it was “insult after injury”.

If Mr Wilson looked more practised than perturbed it’s because he has done this before. His lengthy testimony to the grand jury will have played an important part in its final determination. For that he will have undergone intensive coaching from his lawyers. And, of course, for the ABC interview also.

That will go some way to explain a demeanour that allowed no space for emotion let alone expressions of horror at what he had done or the consequences of it for Ferguson or the whole country. He did let us know he is getting married and having a baby and allowed he “never wanted to take anybody’s life”. He said he felt sorry for the parents. But he didn’t say he was sorry for what he did.

Instead, he took the opportunity to contradict all those things described by witnesses that made this particular police killing so incendiary in the first place. Did Mr Brown raise his hands in surrender? “That would be uncorrect, incorrect. No way,” he replied. Did he fire any shots with Mr Brown lying prone on the ground? “That would be incorrect.”

Would have things happened the same way if Mr Brown were white? “No question.” Never mind, meanwhile, the fond portrayals of Mr Brown as a gentle giant with nary an angry bone inside him. He had the look of a “demon”, the officer said. The aggression in his face was “unfathomable”.

Officer Wilson gave most detail about those moments when he said the young man leaned into his police cruiser punched him and – he alleges – tried to grab the gun.

“I just felt the immense power that he had. And then the way I’ve described it is it was like a 5-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan,” he said. “That’s just how big this man was.” Mr Brown was the same height as Wilson, 6’4”, but about 80 pounds heavier.

He flatly denied shooting Mr Brown in the back as he ran from the SUV, as some witnesses suggested. He described Mr Brown then turning and running towards him while putting a hand into his waist band, making him think he could be armed.

Officer Wilson said that for a split second, he hesitated, asking himself: “Can I shoot this guy?” But very quickly he decided he must. “I fired a series of shots and paused,” he said. But even then the teenager kept coming. “He ignored the commands [to stop] and kept running,” the officer said.

“After I fired the second round of shots, he gets about eight to 10ft [away]. And as he does that, he kinda starts to lean forward like he’s gonna tackle me.

“And eight to 10 feet is close and what I saw was his head. If he’s gonna tackle me, he’s gonna tackle me at that point. And I looked down my barrel of my gun and I fired.” The last bullet struck the young man in the head. He fell and died instantly.

Mr Brown’s parents took direct issue with Mr Wilson’s version of what happened. “Who in their right mind would rush or charge at a police officer who has a gun?” his father, Michael Brown Sr, asked NBC. “He respected law enforcement.”