CLAYTON, Missouri (AP) — A man accused of shooting two officers last week in Ferguson was not targeting police or aiming at demonstrators, his attorney said as he countered a police description of the crime that has heightened tensions in the city grappling with the fallout over the shooting of unarmed 18-year-old black man.
Defense attorney Jerryl Christmas also suggested Monday that St. Louis County police may have used excessive force when arresting the suspect, Jeffrey Williams, saying his client had bruises on his back, shoulders and face and a knot on his head.
Police spokesman Brian Schellman called the lawyer’s allegations “completely false,” adding that Williams was seen by a nurse when booked into the county jail, standard procedure for all incoming inmates.
“The nurse released Williams as fit for confinement,” he said.
Williams is accused of shooting the two officers early Thursday outside Ferguson’s police station, which has been the scene of protests since last summer’s fatal shooting of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson, who is white.
A grand jury declined to indict Wilson in November, and Wilson was cleared of civil rights charges by a Justice Department report released March 4. Wilson resigned in November.
But a separate U.S. Justice Department report found widespread racial bias in the city’s policing and in a municipal court system driven by profit extracted from fines imposed on mostly black and low-income residents.
Williams, 20, appeared in court Monday, one day after his arrest on charges of felony assault, armed criminal action and a weapons offense. Christmas did not appear at the brief hearing and said he first spoke with his client late Monday afternoon.
“This wasn’t any type of ambush shooting,” Christmas said in an interview with The Associated Press, countering an earlier description by St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar of the March 12 shooting outside Ferguson police headquarters. “Those officers were shot accidentally.”
Williams told investigators he was not targeting law enforcement and had been aiming instead at someone with whom he had a dispute, authorities said. But that assertion was met with skepticism by St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch.
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