FERGUSON, Missouri — Long gone are the searing hot days of August, when protesters angrily took to the streets over the killing of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer. The sting of tear gas has dissipated, replaced by the bone-numbing chill of a rare November freeze. After 12 weeks, the grand jury hearing the case of Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown Jr. on a hot, summer afternoon appears on the verge of a decision.
To indict or not to indict, that’s the question that has a city and an entire region swept up in a swirl of tension and anxiety.
On Thursday morning, the man many believe is the last witness to go before the grand jury marched into the Buzz Westfall Justice Center in Clayton and offered testimony before the 12 St. Louis County residents charged with determining Wilson’s fate.
Hours after Dr. Michael Baden, a renowned forensic pathologist who performed an autopsy of Brown at the behest of the slain teen’s family, a group of Brown’s supporters gathered in a second-floor office space on W. Florissant Avenue, what was ground-zero in some of the most fiery confrontations between protesters and police in the wake of Brown’s death.
“No matter what the decision is we’re going to continue holding up a mirror to America,” said Brittany Ferrell, a nursing student and activist with Millennial Activists United, a group formed in response to Brown’s death.
Ferrell stood with a handful of other protesters mulling a post-indictment or non-indictment future. Of the more than half-dozen young people gathered in the Ferguson offices of Hands Up United, a coalition that has advocated for justice for Brown — but also an end to what the group believes are myriad abuses by police and other institutions heaped on blacks — none believed an indictment would be issued.
RELATED: Attorney General Eric Holder weighs in on Ferguson preparations
“I don’t even know what if feels like to be an American,” said Alexis Templeton, another member of Millennial Activist United. Templeton said the early and heavy-handed response by police to protesters, the many official leaks to media among other things has amplified that feeling.
The rumor mill has been actively churning out vague details about when the grand jury would or could announce it’s decision. Late on Thursday afternoon, not long after Baden left the justice center, organizers and activists were swept into a rush. An email and text chain claimed that Brown’s family was given notice that an announcement would be imminent.
It was unclear where the rumor had originated, but it seemed solid enough to spread, one organizer confessed to msnbc. But one of the Brown family’s lawyers, Anthony Gray, told msnbc in a text message the rumor wasn’t true. When asked about the family being given notice, he replied with a simple, “No.”
That’s the current environment in Ferguson. After nearly 100 days of protests, hurt, and uncertainty, everyone seems on edge waiting for word on the grand jury’s decision.
“This will be a defining moment of the history of the state of Missouri,” Benjamin Crump, another Brown family attorney said on Thursday. Crump, who also served as an attorney for the family of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teen shot and killed in 2012 by a former neighborhood watch volunteer in an Orlando, Fla., suburb, then urged dignity and peace, no matter what the grand jury’s decision. Crump described the Brown family’s fight for justice a long and arduous one.
RELATED: Michael Brown family headlines delegation to UN panel in Geneva
Officer Wilson shot and killed Brown, 18, on Aug. 9, after what police say was a struggle over Wilson’s weapon. Police have said Wilson told them he feared for his life, according to a New York Times report citing anonymous government officials briefed on the case. A number of witnesses to the shooting refute the police narrative, claiming instead that Wilson fired on Brown as the teen attempted to flee the officer, delivering the fatal gunshots as Brown turned to surrender with his hands up.
Baden’s testimony comes just over 12 weeks since the grand jury first convened to hear evidence in Brown’s case following the teen’s death. County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s office has said officials do not expect a final decision from the grand jury on whether to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson until mid- to late-November.
But with Baden’s testimony nearing the end of McCulloch’s projected timeline, the attorneys said they believed the grand jury process was approaching its final stages.
“We gain a sense that we’re reaching the end of the road as it relates to witnesses,” attorney Anthony Gray said.
People throughout the St. Louis metropolitan region are hunkering down in anticipation of the possibility of renewed protests once the grand jury reaches its decision on Wilson’s fate. “Regardless of the decision of the grand jury, this will be a defining moment of the history of the state of Missouri,” attorney Benjamin Crump said.
Brown’s death triggered a series of protests in August marked by escalating tensions between demonstrators and law enforcement officials.








