Dornella Conner said she was never a threat to police in the protests in Ferguson.
But Conner, unfortunately, exists as a symbol of what could be called the police’s overzealous response to the protesters. Pregnant and strapped into her car seat, police fired “non lethal” bean bags at the vehicle she was riding in with her boyfriend. The glass was shattered and she lost her left eye in the fall out and has blurred vision in the right eye.
She said she was sitting in her boyfriend’s, De’Angelas Lee’s, car as they were leaving a gas station when an officer fired the bean bag at the car, according to CBS St. Louis.
“They pulled up while we were coming towards the street,” she said. “De’Angelas was trying to get away. They blocked us from the side, front and back.”
Police arrived at the gas station to respond to reports of gunshots nearby, and the officer said he fired at the car because it was headed toward him.
Conner’s father did not accept that. “How can a pregnant person in a car in a seatbelt be causing chaos,” Donnell Conner, told KMOV-TV.
Dornella told Kmov.com: “I didn’t have any weapons. I wasn’t looting or anything. I was just out with my boyfriend. We was just riding around respecting Mike Brown.”
She has left her left eye and the vision in her right eye is blurry.
Meanwhile, evidence has emerged on just how much prosecutors purposely did not try to get an indictment of Wilson. According to reports, prosecutors used the term “marijuana” 44 times in questioning witnesses before the grand jury, clearly trying to introduce in the minds of grand jurors the image of Brown as drug-crazed.
The term “wax,” which refers to a highly potent and sticky tar that is made from concentrating marijuana’s active ingredient, THC, was also a hot button topic for prosecutors. In questioning it was established that one of the witnesses, a construction worker who spoke briefly with Brown on the day that he died, asked Brown if he had tried waxing.
None of the witnesses said they saw Brown wax or use marijuana on the day he was shot.
The toxicology report said Brown had 12 nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood in his system. Michael Baden, the private pathologist hired by Brown’s family, disputed that Brown had a large amount of THC in his body, according to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“In this instance, I think [it] is significant that he smoked marijuana, but 99 out of 100 people taking marijuana aren’t going to get in a fight with a police officer over it, in my experience,” Baden said.
Assistant prosecuting attorney Kathi Alizadeh questioned the well-known pathologist three times, asking if he was a toxicologist, twice if he was a certified toxicology expert, twice if he was a pharmacologist and once if he had been certified as a an expert on pharmacology, The Post-Dispatch reported.
Baden countered with his expertise in interpreting toxicology reports as a medical examiner and said he ran a toxicology lab in New York City for five years.
Despite no evidence linking Brown to waxing, the prosecutors brought it up again on the final day of testimony, according to The Post-Dispatch.
