Michael Brown died in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri after a police shot him to death when they received a tip about him stealing from a convenience store. A new documentary, which centered on the teenager and what happened hours before the supposed stealing and shooting, sparked new questions as to what really took place.
In the new flick titled, "Stranger Fruit" that was released at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, the producers implied Brown did not steal anything from the convenience store. The documentary showed unreleased footage from the surveillance video at the store showing the teenager seemingly trading marijuana for the bag of cigarillos.
In the surveillance video, the 18-year-old visited the convenience store hours before he died. His death prompted waves of protests after the court determined there was no wrongdoing on the part of the police involved in the shooting, Reuters revealed.
In the past, police released a video showing Brown pushing a worker before walking out of the store with the bag of cigarillos. However, the producers believed the teen went back to the store a few hours before he was first seen to retrieve the bag of cigarillos he traded for a small amount of marijuana, USA Today reported.
It seemed the staff at the convenience store agreed with the trade because in one part of the video, the staff passed around the bag given by Brown and they sniffed it. Subsequently, one employee handed Brown two boxes of cigarillos but the teen left the merchandise at the counter. Hours later, the teen returned to get the cigarillos, thus the second video released by police.
The maker of the documentary, Jason Pollock, said, "He left his items at the store and he went back the next day to pick them up." St. Louis County prosecuting attorney, Robert McCulloch, argued there was no transaction between Brown and the staff of the store because they only changed the items returned by the teen and there was no trade at all.
After the documentary's release, 100 protesters gathered outside the store on Sunday evening. The store owners did not release anything yet regarding the protests outside their store.
