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Five Years After Ferguson, a Spate of Dead Activists Fuels Distrust and Division
Six men linked to the Ferguson protests have died, some under suspicious circumstances. Coincidence? Depends who you ask.
On the evening of Oct. 16, 2018, Melissa McKinnies — a prominent protester in Ferguson, Missouri — had a nightmare. Her body seemed to hurt. It felt like someone was pulling on her hands. When she woke up, McKinnies noticed a light on in the basement, where her son Danye Jones slept. Her husband, Derek Chatman, went downstairs to turn it off, didn’t see Jones, and told McKinnies, who walked down to look. There was no sign of Jones, but strangely, she noticed a brick next to his bed. She picked it up and took it into the backyard. That’s where she found her son, hanging from a tree.
McKinnies screamed. She thought it might be part of her nightmare until she realized she wasn’t asleep. She shook her head and tried to focus. Her husband and Jones’ uncle, Daniel Muhammad, heard and came to the backyard. They saw Jones hanging by a bedsheet, fists balled up, pants bunched around his ankles. A chair sat nearby. As the family processed the horrible scene, they thought they noticed some strange details — bruising on Jones’ face, for instance — so Muhammed took photos of Jones before helping…
