Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Missouri, police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, said that the unarmed teenager taunted and threatened him, and accused him of being too cowardly to shoot.
According to
NBC News, Wilson detailed the confrontation with police detectives following the killing and said he was afraid for his life.
Specifically, he was asked what he was thinking during the encounter. He said, "He's gonna kill me." "How do I survive?" "How do I live through this, basically?"
Later in the interview, Wilson described Brown as physically uncontrollable and "for lack of a better word, crazy. I've never seen that. I mean, it was very aggravated, aggressive, hostile. Just, you couldn't, you could, you could tell he was lookin' through ya."
Court records show that Wilson's testimony before the grand jury was also along those lines. He was questioned for four hours in September, NBC News reported.
At one point during the testimony, he said, "I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan," adding, "That's just how big he felt and how small I felt just from grasping his arm."
He also described in his testimony to the court the rage Brown unleashed on him.
"The only way I can describe it, is it looks like a demon," Wilson said. "That's how angry he looked,"
The New York Post reported.
The details of the testimony and whether the officer felt physically at risk are pivotal in determining whether the shooting was justified under the law. The grand jury's decided not to indict Wilson on any charges.
There were accounts, however, that conflicted with Wilson's, but several witnesses testified that Brown did advance on the officer.
"As tragic as this is, it was not a crime," St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch said, according to NBC News.
In the immediate aftermath of the incident, Wilson described the confrontation moment by moment to investigating detectives, starting from the first encounter when Wilson asked the teenagers to stop walking in the center of the road after responding to a call about a theft of mini-cigars.
Brown swore at him, at which point Wilson said he tried to get out of his car but Brown cursed and shut the door.
Brown, he said, "was swinging and punching at me from outside the vehicle" and made at least three attempts to enter the car through the open window. He also gave Wilson two "solid blows" to the face with a closed fist, the officer recounted.
He told the jury that he was concerned that another punch to his face would "knock me out or worse," the Post reported.
Brown then turned to the person he was with, giving him "several packs of cigarillos," at which point Wilson grabbed Brown's arm, but he said Brown was too big and powerful to control, according to NBC News.
"I was already trapped and didn't know what he was gonna do to me, but I knew it wasn't gonna be good," Wilson said.
Brown had him pinned him down so that Wilson couldn't reach his Mace canister, he said. He said he wasn't carrying a Taser so he pulled out his .40-caliber handgun.
Wilson told investigators that Brown taunted him saying, "You're too much of a pussy to shoot me." Then, he said, Brown grabbed his gun, and "my firearm was in his control around my hand."
Wilson then described in detail the moments he began firing. Two shots were fired from inside the car at which point Brown ran away. Wilson said he got out of the car, called again for back-up and then began pursuing Brown.
Brown "stopped, he turned, looked at me, made like a grunting noise and had the most intense aggressive face I've ever seen on a person," Wilson said, according to NBC News.
He fired more shots, he said, which "hit him in the head and he went down right there."
"I got on the radio and said, 'Send me every car we got and a supervisor,'" Wilson said.
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