"I JUST SAW SOMEONE DIE OMFG" [View all]

[kpete]

A Twitter user appears to have provided a contemporaneous account from the scene of the Ferguson, Mo., police shooting of Michael Brown, 18, on Saturday, Aug. 9.

The account of the incident was found and curated by Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson (WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES). The first tweets by @TheePharoah, whose Twitter biography says he lives in St. Louis, are timestamped for TPM at the time of the shooting (1 p.m. ET on Aug. 9; the shooting occurred at 12 p.m. CT, or 1 p.m ET).

The tweets also include at least one detail -- that Brown had allegedly stolen cigarillos from a nearby convenience store -- that was not public until Friday. TPM could not immediately independently verify the authenticity of the tweets, and there is no way to know if this user's account is an accurate or complete depiction of the events of the day.

However, they do appear to be the only contemporaneous and recorded eyewitness account of the events to surface thus far. They are thus significant because they were recorded before it could be known that Brown's death would become a matter of intense national news interest.

Below are a few of the tweets. Click the link for the full account, which includes at least one image that may be disturbing for some.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/twitter-user-michael-brown-shooting-ferguson