Parents of slain Missouri teen return home after UN testimony

Credit: Reuters/Jim Young

1 of 4. A woman looks out from a laundromat boarded up in preparation for the verdict from the grand jury on the indictment of Darren Wilson, in Ferguson, Missouri, November 13, 2014.

Michael Brown Sr. and Lesley McSpadden, whose 18-year-old son Michael Brown Jr. was killed on Aug. 9, provoking weeks of sometimes violent demonstrations in Ferguson, spoke to reporters at a St. Louis airport after returning from Geneva, where they met with members of the U.N. Committee on Torture.

'We were able to let the United Nations know that in the United States we were being treated unfairly and just basically expose that something should be done because this is not a year or two years, this is hundreds of years,' McSpadden said. 'I hate what happened to my son but it must stop with my son.' [ID:nL6N0T24TI]

Officials and residents around Ferguson are waiting for a report from a grand jury, which has been meeting in secret for weeks and is expected to decide before the month's end whether to charge officer Darren Wilson.

Many in the St. Louis area fear that another wave of rioting could follow the grand jury's report, particularly if it decides not to bring criminal charges.

A suburban St. Louis school district told parents that it would dismiss students early if the grand jury report comes on a school day and said prosecutors had promised to provide the district at least three hours' notice if the decision comes on a weekday, with 24 hours notice if it is made on a weekend.

'The three-hour window will allow us enough time to transport students home safely,' said Superintendent Grayling Tobias of the Hazelwood, Missouri, school district, which is adjacent to Ferguson.

But the Ferguson-Florissant School District has received no such assurances that it would receive an early warning when the grand jury decides, said spokeswoman Jana Shortt.

A spokesman for St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch did not respond to a request for comment.

Police in Clayton, Missouri, where the grand jury is sitting, told residents they had learned that protesters were planning demonstrations for the first business day after the news of whether Wilson is indicted breaks.

'Numerous demonstrations have taken place in our city related to the events that began in Ferguson over the summer. To date they have been largely peaceful, with few arrests,' Police Chief Kevin Murphy said in a statement on Friday. 'We continue to be open to working cooperatively with organizing groups.'

PREPARING FOR UNREST

Signs of preparation for the grand jury's decision could be seen around the area, with businesses along the Ferguson street that saw the worst of the August unrest keeping boards on their windows and some shops near the Ferguson Police Department also beginning to board up their fronts.

On Thursday private pathologist Dr. Michael Baden testified to the grand jury. Baden, hired by Brown's family in part to try to determine whether Brown was trying to surrender when he was shot, has said Brown was shot at least six times, twice in the head.

Witness accounts of the shooting have conflicted. Some described a struggle between Brown and Wilson and others said Brown put his hands up.

Brown's father told reporters he had welcomed the invitation to speak to the United Nations.

'I think the world understands my pain,' Brown said. 'There are a lot of people that went through the same situation whose voices haven't been heard.'

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Additional reporting by Fiona Ortiz; Editing by Bill Trott and Eric Beech)

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