CLAYTON, Mo. _ St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell said Thursday that he will not charge the former Ferguson police officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in 2014.
Bell's comments appeared in an exclusive interview with St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger.
"In the end, we cannot ethically bring this case to trial," Bell told Messenger in an interview before he announced the results of the investigation at a news conference. But he said his investigation does not exonerate the former officer, Darren Wilson.
A lawyer for Wilson did not return messages seeking comment on the decision.
Bell's 2018 win in the Democratic primary for St. Louis County prosecutor renewed calls to reopen the investigation into Brown's death. Last year, on the five-year anniversary of Brown's death, his family demanded Bell's office reinvestigate the killing that rocked St. Louis and launched national conversations about race and policing.
Bell had been reluctant to say if his office would reopen the case.
Wilson, a white officer, shot and killed Brown on Aug. 9, 2014, in the middle of a street inside the busy Canfield Green apartment complex. Police left the Black teenager's body in the street for more than four hours, igniting outrage across the country and day after day of angry, sometimes violent protests in Ferguson.
The five-year anniversary of Brown's death came eight months into Bell's first term.
The 2014 shooting motivated months of protests here and elsewhere.
Bell's predecessor, Robert McCulloch, reviewed evidence in the shooting and convened a grand jury. The jury ultimately declined to indict Wilson, reigniting widespread protests.
Wilson resigned from the Police Department in November 2014.
The next year, the U.S. Department of Justice concluded Wilson was justifiably afraid of Brown and could not be prosecuted federally. The Justice Department also said in one of two lengthy reports that Ferguson unfairly targeted and bolstered its budget on the backs of impoverished minorities.
