The key witness, who described Michael Brown charging ‘like a football player’ at Officer Darren Wilson in the moments before the fatal Aug. 9 shooting, has been named as Sandra McElroy, a 45-year-old St. Louis woman and Wilson supporter who likely was not even in Ferguson the day of the shooting. The Smoking Gun report found McElroy, who once lied to police in another high-profile St. Louis case, has a history of racist rants online and was convicted of felony check fraud.
A mentally ill woman who used the N‑word to describe blacks and previously lied to police about witnessing a high-profile crime was allowed to act as “Witness 40” for the Ferguson grand jury, even though she likely was not there and was a known, outspoken backer of Officer Darren Wilson, according to reports. Convicted felon Sandra McElroy, 45, didn’t give police a witness statement about the Aug. 9 killing of unarmed black teen Michael Brown until Sept. 11, well after several descriptions of the shooting had been detailed in the press, an investigation by The Smoking Gun found. And her now oft-cited account, that Brown charged at a defenseless Wilson “like a football player,” follows much of what Wilson told investigators about that day. But her stories, given to local and federal authorities and presented
over two different days to the 12-person grand jury, are conflicting and filled with bizarre twists and details that make it likely she didn’t even witness the shooting. Instead, according to The Smoking Gun, she likely sought to cast herself as a key player in the contentious story that ended with riots in Ferguson and protests around the world after the grand jury failed to indict Wilson in the killing. “I know what I seen,” she told federal investigators at one point. “I know you don’t believe me.” The report has given new hope to the team representing Brown’s family, the Rev. Al Sharpton told the Daily News on Tuesday, because it “shows (the grand jury) was not a fair process. There was questionable testimony.”
Lawyers for the Brown family are reviewing the testimony and new details, Sharpton said, and will forward any findings to the federal justice department, which is reviewing the case for possible civil rights violations.
Sharpton said the responsibility for the “Witness 40” fiasco lies in the hands of St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch. “Whether she was allowed to testify out of negligence or whether (her history) was known, either way it is grounds for prosecutorial misconduct,” Sharpton said. “There seem to be grounds to question the purity of the grand jury process and the prosecutor who handled it.” “Witness 40” gave very little reason for anyone to believe her. She told investigators in October that she was in Ferguson — some 30 miles from her home — the day of the shooting because she wanted to “pop in” on a friend she hadn’t seen in 26 years and had gotten lost, an account given to the grand jury on Oct. 23, according to The Smoking Gun.
She was asking for directions from a man on the street when an unarmed Brown attacked and charged the officer, she said, forcing Wilson to open fire. McElroy, once the panel broke for the day, told prosecutors that she had written down her account, and offered to bring in her “journal” so she could “make sure I don’t get things confused because then it will be word for word,” the website reported. McElroy frequently posted negative comments about Michael Brown, 18, in the days, weeks and months after he was killed. When she returned 11 days later with the written account, the story had completely changed.
“Well Im gonna take my random drive to Florisant,” the first journal entry read. “Need to understand the Black race better so I stop calling Blacks N — –s and Start calling them People.” She told the grand jury she frequently likes to “go into all the African-American neighborhoods” where she is known to go “in and have coffee and I will strike up a conversation with an African-American and I will try to talk to them because I’m trying to understand more.” All of her statements were made under oath — and appear not to be the first time she’s lied to police. In 2007, McElroy told KMOV-TV that she’d long known high-profile kidnapping suspect Michael Devlin, who’d recently been arrested for keeping St. Louis boy Shawn Hornbeck captive for four years. Police in the St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood later shot back at McElroy’s claims that she had tipped off police to evidence in the case long before Hornbeck was rescued.
“The Kirkwood Police Department has investigated her allegation and we have no record of any contact with Mrs. McElroy in regards to Shawn Hornbeck,”police wrote at the time. “We have found this story is a complete fabrication.” That same year, McElroy was convicted of felony check fraud charges and given three years probation, according to The Smoking Gun. She also told the grand jury she’d been diagnosed as bipolar but hadn’t taken her medication in 25 years and that she’d been severely injured in a 2001 car crash that left her with memory loss. And in 2005, while she and her then-husband were in the midst of a bankruptcy filing, the couple’s attorney withdrew from the case because Sandra McElroy frequently called the officer and “repeatedly used profanity when speaking with Counsel’s secretary,” screaming matches that “escalated to the use of racial slurs,” documents obtained by The Smoking Gun reveal. Her racism and disregard for black people is well-documented by McElroy’s social media footprint, which includes some disturbing comments. She used her YouTube account to write “put them monkeys in a cage,” on a clip about two black women being sentenced for murder, The Smoking Gun reported. And a second clip, about a white woman who went missing while in an interracial relationship, McElroy wrote, “she what happens when you bed down with a monkey have ape babies and party with them.” She also used Facebook to chime in on the Ferguson shooting, posting opinionated, race-driven comments before, during and after she gave witness testimony to the grand jury.
On Aug. 17, she wrote, “Prayers, support God Bless Officer Wilson,” while less than a month later, she posted a graphic of a dead Michael Brown lying in the street, overlayed with a photo of a smirking Wilson and text that read, “Michael Brown already received justice. So please, stop asking for it.” She also spearheaded an online fundraiser to raise money for law enforcement officers in the St. Louis area who had “been dealing with all the long hours” policing the Ferguson unrest, according to The Smoking Gun. A call to a spokesman for McCulloch was not immediately returned. Attempts by the Daily News to contact McElroy were unsuccessful. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/witness-40-ferguson-grand-jury-racist-liar-report-article‑1.2047404