New footage of Michael Brown raises questions about his death in Ferguson that led to national uproar
AP
The tape, obtained by documentary filmmaker Jason Pollock and included in his film, "Strange Fruit," seems to show Michael Brown entering a convenience store around 1 a.m. on the day he died and handing what looks like a small bag of marijuana to employees behind the store's counter.
The video then appears to show the employees passing the bag to one another and smelling its contents. Afterwards, the footage shows employees handing Brown cigarillos. Brown walks away with the cigarillos before the video shows him coming back and giving them to the employees for what Pollock says is safekeeping.
The clip shows Brown returning to the store close to noon the following morning and waiting at the counter with his hands clasped behind his back. Pollock, who narrates the video, says at this point, "[Brown] left his items at the store and he went back the next day to pick them up. Mike did not rob the store."
The video, the veracity of which has not yet been confirmed, raises questions about the police department's claim that Brown committed a strong-armed robbery of the convenience store. When the case initially gained national attention, the police released security footage from a store nearby that showed Brown pushing an employee and taking the cigarillos shortly before he was shot by officer Darren Wilson.
However, the new footage obtained by Pollock seems to imply that Brown was engaging in an exchange of goods, not a robbery.
"There was some type of exchange, for one thing, for another," Lesley McSpadden, Brown's mother, says in the documentary, which premiered at the South by Southwest festival on Saturday.
She adds: "What [the police department] didn't show is ... that there was an understanding" between the parties involved in the alleged altercation.
This account was disputed by Jay Kanzler, an attorney who represents the convenience store and its employees. "There was no transaction," Kanzler told the New York Times. "There was no understanding. No agreement. Those folks didn't sell him cigarillos for pot. The reason he gave it back is he was walking out the door with unpaid merchandise and they wanted it back."
Pollock, whose documentary tells Michael Brown's story from his family's perspective, pushed back against the police department's and Kanzler's claims.
"They destroyed Michael's character with the tape, and they didn't show us what actually happened," Pollock told the Times. "So this shows their intention to make him look bad. And shows suppression of evidence."
Check out CNN's segment featuring the new security footage»
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