Claim: Deandre Joshua and Shawn Gray were murdered after testifying before a grand jury in Ferguson.
Example: [Collected via email, December 2014]
Deandre Joshua, 20 was murdered after testifying to a grand jury in the ferguson, MO case. Supposedly he was found not far from where Brown's body was & he was covered in lighter fluid. It was a post I saw on FB & just wondered if it was true.
There is another rumor running around Facebook that a second witness who testified before the Ferguson Grand Jury has been found dead. His name is Shawn Gray. I did a Google search and found info about him being found dead in
Origins: Shortly after a 20-year-old man named Deandre Joshua was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, on
The details of Joshua's death are gruesome. According to the
This is Deandre Joshua. This 20 year old man testified in the Grand Jury case against Darren Wilson. He was shot and killed on Tuesday. His body was found, with lighter fluid all over it, not far from where Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown. Why are broken windows on the front page of our news, and not his face?
However, there is no documentation Deandre Joshua testified before the grand jury. According to the Boston Globe, names of the witnesses were kept secret, and anyone who disclosed that information would face a misdemeanor charge. Additionally, Joshua's family and friends told the
"He was not a witness," said Ed Magee, a spokesman for the county prosecutor.
According to family members, friends and law-enforcement officials, however, Joshua was nowhere near Canfield Drive when Brown was killed during a confrontation with Wilson on
Deandre Joshua did not witness the shooting of Michael Brown, nor did he testify before the grand jury. The only connection that Joshua had to the case was that he was a childhood friend of Dorian Johnson (who did witness the shooting):
In early December 2014, a similar rumor concerning the death of Shawn Gray began circulating. While Gray's death, like Deandre Joshua's, was certainly tragic, it was not connected to the death of Mike Brown.
The rumor appeared on several blogs and received a viral push on
Correct me if I'm wrong but that's the SECOND Grand Jury witness found dead this month. Where's the FBI? | @RockawayYouth @BlkMillennials
— Operation Ferguson (@OpFerguson) December 8, 2014
The rumors about Shawn Gray are similar to the rumors about Deandre Joshua. First, the people who testified before the grand jury were never publicly identified. Second, friends and family of Gray have stated that his death had nothing to do with Mike Brown or Darren Wilson:
Last updated: 8 December 2014