A third autopsy was conducted on Monday on the body of Michael Brown, the black teenager shot by a police officer on 9 August in Ferguson, Missouri. But it may not clarify what happened. "It is unlikely to be necessary," says Michael Graham, a forensic pathologist at St Louis University, and will not find anything new. The first autopsy confirmed police accounts - that the 18-year-old was killed by gunshot wounds -although the number of shots was not revealed. As New Scientist went to press, attempts to reconstruct events were relying on the findings of the second autopsy, carried out at the request of Brown's family by veteran medical examiner Michael Baden. His preliminary report shows nine gunshot wounds: four on the right arm, three on the head and two on the chest - with no exit wounds on the back. This appears to support the claim of the police officer who shot Brown, Darren Wilson, who says Brown was facing him when he fired. But other interpretations have been put forward. "Given this wound pattern, you could come up with a thousand positions and scenarios," says Graham.
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