June 02, 2011|By Tricia Bishop, The Baltimore Sun
Twelve bullets from an off-duty officer's gun struck Tyrone Brown, but it wasn't until the last one hit that the former Marine dropped.
Seven of them lodged in his 32-year-old body — they were later recovered from his buttocks, back, thighs and pelvis — and three passed clean through, an autopsy shows. Two others grazed him, leaving behind superficial wounds. And one hit him twice, entering and exiting a pinch of skin near his right hip, then driving back into his soft tissue and coming to a rest in his right buttock.
That one, which left a trail of wounds, likely hit Brown while he was bent over, Assistant Medical Examiner Melissa Brassell testified Thursday — the second day of the murder trial of Brown's killer, Baltimore Police Officer Gahiji Tshamba.
Tshamba, 37, got into a row with Brown outside a Baltimore bar on the morning of June 5, 2010, and shot him a dozen times as patrons emptied from the Mount Vernon bars. The officer says it was in self-defense, but prosecutors say Tshamba was the aggressor, drunk with power and alcohol.
Brassell said she couldn't tell whether Brown was bent in half in order to charge when that one bullet struck, or if he was doubled over from the pain of metal cutting into his torso.
The autopsy photos — shown Thursday to Baltimore Circuit Judge Edward R. K. Hargadon, who will decide the case — are graphic.
Brown's naked body is dotted with small holes. He was hit in the shoulder, the chest, the abdomen, the lower torso, both thighs and above his left knee, though the major damage was on the inside: to his torn liver, stomach and the loops of his small bowel. Two bullets entered Brown at close range — from two inches away, Brassell said — and 10 of them were potentially fatal.
The photos also show Brown to be much bigger than Tshamba, who barely fills his courtroom suit. Tshamba is listed in court records as 5 feet, 8 inches tall and 150 pounds, compared to Brown's 6-foot-2 and 238.
Witnesses, who saw the incident but don't know Tshamba's name, call him the "short guy" or the "little" man when describing the way he confronted Brown for inappropriately grabbing a woman's behind, then pulled out his service weapon and opened fire.
The men got into a scuffle, then the "smaller of the two guys was reaching in the back [of his pants], like he was trying to pull something out," said Trillane Hill, who witnessed the incident with his spouse, Jacqueline, as they walked back to their car from a night out on the town.
"I told my wife, 'He's going for a gun.' " Hill said. Then: "Gunshots."
Hill said he thought Tshamba may have appeared scared at one point, as he geared up to act. It lasted just a moment, before Tshamba "ran up on him," Hill said.
Brown's hands were up in the air as Tshamba fired, Hill said. The big man turned at one point, as if to run away, but didn't get far. He fell once the gun was emptied of all 13 rounds.
Brown died within an hour; his blood-alcohol content was 0.18 percent — down from 0.22 two hours earlier, the autopsy showed. The cause of death was "multiple gunshot wounds," Brassell said, and the manner: "homicide."
On-duty officers arrived at the scene within minutes, as Brown lay bleeding near a Dumpster. In a police report, Officer J. Miller said Tshamba met her, "waving and holding a black handgun" in a locked position.
"He said to me, 'I shot somebody,' " Miller testified Thursday.
The trial will continue Monday.
tricia.bishop@baltsun.com
