Governor Nixon has ordered the National Guard to go to Ferguson. He signed an executive order early this morning, citing what he called “Deliberate, coordinated and intensifying violent attacks on lives and property” in the city. He says the Guard will help the Highway Patrol and local police restore order there.
He says he has taken the step after talking to Police chiefs in St. Louis and St. Louis County and the superintendent of the highway patrol.
Law enforcement authorities say three people were wounded in shootings overnight, none of them involving officers. Seven or eight people have been arrested for failing to disperse.
The Ferguson-Florissant School District has postponed its first day of school. Classes had been scheduled to begin last Thursday…then today. But late last night, the district cancelled today’s opening because of “continuing unrest’ in some parts of Ferguson.”
The private autopsy done for Michael Brown’s family shows he was shot at least six times including twice in the head, with one of the bullets entering the top of his head, indicating Brown was bent forward when he was hit.
The autopsy was done by former New York City chief medical examiner Michael Baden (bah-den), at the family’s request. The report says Brown was shot four times in the right arm and all of the wounds were from the front and not at close range.
But the lead attorney for the Brown family, Daryl Parks, told CNN this morning no rush to judgment should be made about the findings because further forensic investigations are underway. However he says the is a “real possibility” that Brown and the policeman who shot him did struggle in the police car for control of the officer’s gun. The president of the St. Louis County Police Association, Gabe Crocker, told CNN this morning that the autopsy results bring some eyewitness accounts of the shooting into question.
Two other autopsy reports will be issued later.
