It's been quiet on the Ferguson front in recent days, but the various investigations continue in the background. Late last month audio was obtained in which the shooting was recorded in the background of a web conferencing video that happened to be going on at the same time. A couple days later, the company whose web conferencing software was used to record the audio confirmed the exact time of the recording - 12:02:14 PM on 8/9/2014 - matched the timeline of Michael Brown's slaying by Officer Darren Wilson of the Ferguson PD.
That's where things left off until just a little while ago ... updates y'all.
SST, Inc. is the maker of ShotSpotter which is a technology present in 65 American cities - including St. Louis - that uses audio receivers to identify shootings in order to assist law enforcement with response time, and location identification. While the ShotSpotter system in St. Louis was too far to record the bullet barrage that killed Michael Brown, they have stepped in to investigate the aforementioned audio recording and see what conclusions could be reached. Here's what ShotSpotter has concluded:
- The background sounds (pops) on the recording are indeed gunshots
- 10 Shots Fired Total ... 6 shots, a 3 second pause, followed by 4 more shots.
- Only one shooter
- The source of all 10 shots occurred within a 3 ft. radius, ie. Officer Wilson had stopped running by the time he started shooting up the street.
SST could not make any determination about the single shot that some witnesses have claimed was fired from inside Officer Wilson's car, since it either did not happen, or the recording began after it was fired.
At the very least, this can help determine the sequence of bullet entry points that were identified in the Brown family's private autopsy of Michael Brown.