Krystal Brown says she has no doubt her ex-husband, Marlon Brown, was killed by the police car that struck him, despite a medical examiner’s report that raises doubts about whether the car hit him at all.
Brown, a licensed practical nurse and occupational therapist, has two children with the late 38 year old: 12 year old Marlon Jr. and 13-year-old Imani. She says the two remained close friends even after divorcing in 2006. Now she is just hoping for answers in a case the county authorities have said is closed.
Marlon Brown died in May after fleeing from a friend’s car, which he was driving, after officers attempted to pull him over for a seat belt violation.
“He was on a curfew and didn’t want to go back to jail,” Krystal Brown told theGrio, adding that the curfew stemmed from child support and other non-criminal violations. He “had been to jail, but never prison,” she said. Besides, she added, police didn’t know any of that when they saw him run from the driver’s seat into a field near several houses.The Volusia County medical examiner’s office declined at to comment on this story
Dash cam video, released by Brown’s family on YouTube, shows Brown kicking off his sandals as he exits a white car, and then running toward a vegetable garden. Officers can be heard yelling at Brown to stop running. Brown slips as he heads toward the field, and soon disappears under the police cruiser driven by Deland officer James Harris. When the car comes to a stop, Harris can be heard on the dash cam yelling at a second officer, Justin Ferrari, “I think he’s underneath the f—ing car!” Both officers then try unsuccessfully, to lift the car off of Brown. The entire incident lasts just seconds.
The medical examiner’s report states that Brown died from the pressure put on his body once the car was on top of him, but inexplicably to his former wife and her attorney, Ben Crump, the coroner ruled that there was no evidence Brown was hit by the car. The autopsy report read in part: “[Brown] slipped and fell and then the police car came to a stop on top of him,” adding that Brown was unable to breathe because his head was bent downward and compressed by the weight and position of the vehicle. The report determined the cause of death was “mechanical asphyxia.”
Further, an expert for the office of state attorney R. J. Larizza said there was no evidence that Officer Harris accelerated in pursuit of Brown. A grand jury declined to charge Harris, though the DeLand police chief, William Ridgeway, fired Harris, who was on probationary status, on May 31st, after viewing the video, and determining that Harris’ actions “did not meet [the department’s] internal standards” and were “not consistent with our department’s training, directives, or accepted practices or techniques,” according to a statement released by the DeLand police department.
After the grand jury ruling, Krystal Brown demanded to see the video, which she released. She says her children have seen the video in her presence, and online.
She said two police officers have told her the officer used a racial slur before he struck Brown, and that the slur can be heard on the dash cam video when the audio is enhanced.
Crump added that just before the officers stopped Brown, they pulled over a woman, expecting to find drugs on her, but the search turned up nothing, and that the officer can be heard using a vulgarity in frustration.
The Volusia County medical examiner’s office is the same one that employed Shiping Bao, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Trayvon Martin, and who was fired a few weeks ago. Bao is suing the department for wrongful termination, and told theGrio in an interview that people in the office were dismissive of the George Zimmerman case, believing he acted in self defense in fatally shooting Martin, as he told police. Zimmerman was acquitted of second degree murder and manslaughter in July.
‘He was on the road to recovery’
Krystal Brown says her former husband’s legal problems occurred in Broward County, but that he was trying to put his troubles behind him.
“He was on the road to recovery,” she said.
She says she found out about his death from a Facebook post by one of Marlon Brown’s cousins, and rushed to the scene, which is just blocks from the home of a close friend of Brown’s. She says the friend confirmed to her that it was likely Brown’s body partially visible on the ground, behind strings of yellow crime scene tape. she says it took about an hour for police to confirm that the body on the ground was Brown’s.
She says she was “shocked” by the autopsy report, particularly after viewing the dashcam video.
The Volusia County medical examiner’s office declined at to comment on this story
“We were asking to see the video since the beginning,” she said. “We were told {Florida Highway Patrol] was still investigating. When it was turned over to the state attorney, we were promised that before any announcements were made he would sit down with us and go over the evidence.”
But she says that never happened. “We heard about the verdict from reporters when they started contacting me,” she says. “I called around to other family members like his aunt,” with whom Brown lived since the death of his mother, “and they had not been notified [of the decision not to indict] either.”
She adds that she has had no contact from State Attorney Larizza
As for what she wants to see happen now, Brown says, “we want justice. We want an independent prosecutor to come back in and look at the case.”
“And for [the officer] to be held accountable,” adds Crump.
Brown says her children are coping with their father’s sudden death.
“Marlon is a little more expressive about it and he definitely feels that his dad has not received justice,” she says. “He’s 12. Imani doesn’t talk about the video but she has been following some of the news and the comments on Facebook.” She says going online has been both traumatic and therapeutic for the kids. “They’re actually getting a lot of support from other kids and even some adults,” she says. “They came to me this morning and said it’s a hard thing to look at [the video] but a lot of people are being so nice.”
As for whether she has any doubts about how her former husband died, Krystal Brown says, “No, I have no doubt. The video is very clear and it speaks for itself.”