Last week, Ferguson Chief of Police Tom Jackson told KMOV’s Laura Hettiger the officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown on August 9 “was hit” and the “side of his face was swollen” in the moments leading up to the shooting.
In keeping with Jackson’s report, The Gateway Pundit is now saying it learned “from a source within the “Prosecuting Attorney’s office and confirmed by the St. Louis County Police” that the officer suffered an “orbital blowout fracture to the eye socket” during his confrontation with Brown.
While the veracity of the report is still up for debate, this is yet another report that seems to disprove the initial information out of Ferguson that Brown was nothing more than an “unarmed black teen” who was shot execution style by a white police officer.
“The goalpost will continue to change as more information comes out because we were told this was essentially a white guy executing a black guy in the street for no reason,” Stu said. “Now, if this comes out and is accurate… [and] we find out this guy had the type of injury that this sounds like, and… if there's photos of this guy with his entire face caved in, we're going to move… away from ‘it was a racist execution in the street.’”
As Pat and Stu agreed, the media’s visceral reaction in these types of tragedies always seems to be: Blame the police. As this particular case continues to shake out, however, it appears as though there is a lot more to this incident than was previously reported.
“We're going to get to a point where the argument from that side is going to be so ridiculous. If this evidence and these sources hold up, it's going to be insane,” Stu concluded. “This is why it just pisses me off when everyone judges these officers immediately without any of the facts. Their job, after getting the crap beat out of them, is to go after the guy again. Their protocol is to do that, not to drive away, not to go to the Wendy's drive-thru as I would do.”
UPDATE: FoxNews.com reports that a "well-placed source" confirmed the officer was badly beaten and had to go to the hospital. According to their story:
“The Assistant (Police) Chief took him to the hospital, his face all swollen on one side,” said the insider. “He was beaten very severely.”
Front page image courtesy of the AP