thesmokingun | The grand jury witness who testified that she saw Michael Brown
pummel a cop before charging at him “like a football player, head down,”
is a troubled, bipolar Missouri woman with a criminal past who has a
history of making racist remarks and once insinuated herself into
another high-profile St. Louis criminal case with claims that police
eventually dismissed as a “complete fabrication,” The Smoking Gun has
learned.
In interviews with police, FBI agents, and federal and state
prosecutors--as well as during two separate appearances before the grand
jury that ultimately declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson--the
purported eyewitness delivered a preposterous and perjurious account of the fatal encounter in Ferguson.
Referred to only as “Witness 40” in grand jury material, the woman
concocted a story that is now baked into the narrative of the Ferguson
grand jury, a panel before which she had no business appearing.
While the “hands-up” account of Dorian Johnson is often cited by
those who demanded Wilson’s indictment, “Witness 40”’s testimony about
seeing Brown batter Wilson and then rush the cop like a defensive end
has repeatedly been pointed to by Wilson supporters as directly
corroborative of the officer’s version of the August 9 confrontation.
The “Witness 40” testimony, as Fox News sees it, is proof that the
18-year-old Brown’s killing was justified, and that the Ferguson grand
jury got it right.
However, unlike Johnson, “Witness 40”--a 45-year-old St. Louis
resident named Sandra McElroy--was nowhere near Canfield Drive on the
Saturday afternoon Brown was shot to death.
Though prosecutors have sought to cloak the identity of grand jury
witnesses, a TSG investigation has identified McElroy as “Witness 40.” A
careful analysis of information contained in the unredacted portions of
“Witness 40”’s grand jury testimony helped reporters identify McElroy
and then conclusively match up details of her life with those of
“Witness 40.”
TSG examined criminal, civil, matrimonial, and bankruptcy court
records, as well as online postings and comments to unmask McElroy as
“Witness 40,” the fabulist whose grand jury testimony and law
enforcement interviews are deserving of multi-count perjury indictments.
Since the identities of grand jurors--as well as details of their
deliberations--remain secret, there is no way of knowing what impact
McElroy’s testimony had on members of the panel, which subsequently
declined to vote indictments against Wilson. That decision touched
off looting and arson in Ferguson, about 30 miles from the apartment
the divorced McElroy shares with her three daughters.
* * *
Sandra McElroy did not provide police with a contemporaneous account
of the Brown-Wilson confrontation, which she claimed to have watched
unfold in front of her as she stood on a nearby sidewalk smoking a
cigarette.
Instead, McElroy (seen at left) waited four weeks after the shooting
to contact cops. By the time she gave St. Louis police a statement on
September 11, a general outline of Wilson’s version of the shooting had
already appeared in the press. McElroy’s account of the confrontation
dovetailed with Wilson’s reported recollection of the incident.
