Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO this August, broke his silence on Tuesday in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
“I don’t think it’s haunting,” Wilson said. “It’s always going to be something that happened. The reason I have a clean conscience is that I know I did my job right.”
Wilson maintained that Brown reached into his police vehicle and grabbed for his gun and claimed that he feared for his life.
“I just felt the immense power that he had. And then the way I’ve described it is, it was like a 5-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan. That’s just how big this man was,” Wilson said. “He was very large, very powerful man.”
Wilson is 6’4 and 210 pounds; Brown was the same height and weighed close to 300 pounds.
Wilson told ABC that after a few sustained punches from Brown, he wasn’t sure if he’d “be able to survive another hit like that.” It was then that Wilson claimed he warned Brown to back off or he’d shoot.
“You’re too much of a (bleeped) to shoot me,” Wilson claimed Brown told him before grabbing the top of the officer’s gun.
Wilson claimed that his gun jammed on the first two shots before he finally got a third shot off. “He gets even angrier,” Wilson said. “His aggression, his face, the intensity just increases. He comes back in at me again.”
Wilson went on to describe a scene in which there was a cycle of him shooting at Brown and the teen rearing up to charge at him before he was forced to shoot again, ultimately delivering a head shot that killed the teen.
Wilson told ABC that he was sorry for the loss of life, but that he was simply doing his job as he was trained to do.
The 28-year-old officer, who recently got married to a fellow officer, said, “We just want to have a normal life.”
Wilson remains on leave from the Ferguson police department pending an internal investigation, according to Ferguson Mayor James Knowles. Last week, sources said that Wilson was in negotiations to resign from the police department. Wilson has reportedly told associates that he would resign in order to ease tensions and protect his fellow officers.