On August 9, 2014, a tragic incident in a Ferguson, Missouri, resulted in riots and protests that lasted several weeks. Eighteen-year-old Michael Brown was shot dead after an altercation with a police officer. Some witnesses stated that Brown was shot as he moved toward the policeman, ignoring calls to freeze. Others vehemently denied this, claiming that when Brown was shot, he had his hands in the air and was standing still.
The details of the shooting were laid out before a courtroom and resulted in the jury deciding not to indict Officer Darren Wilson. This outcome caused widespread rage. It is an incident that made waves around the world because it fueled racial tensions as well.
Brown’s stepmother, Cal, believes that the young man had premonitions of his own death not long before he was shot. She claimed that Michael spoke to her about God about a month before he died when she was admitted to the hospital. He was afraid that she would die in the hospital and told her that he had been dreaming of death and of sheets covered in blood and hanging on a clothing line.
Cal told mourners at Michael’s funeral that she believed the images of bloodstained sheets that the young man spoke of was a sign of what his own clothes would look like after he had been shot. She went further to say that she had taken him out to lunch after he had graduated and he said something eerie that would ring true not long after: “Someday the world is going to know my name.”
