The Ferguson police officer injured during a protest last week is beginning to show signs of recovery, his family said Thursday.
Travis Brown is demonstrating “small but significant signs of progress” that include a few coughs and leg and hand movements, his sister Christina Bailey wrote Thursday morning on a GoFundMe started to fund his recovery.
“These moments, though brief, filled us with hope and joy,” she wrote. “Today, the doctors checked TJ’s brain activity, and the results were encouraging.”
Brown suffered a severe brain injury during a protest Friday night commemorating the 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown (no relation) by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. Although the small gathering began peacefully, things took a turn around midnight, when protesters began to shake and eventually broke off a segment of the fencing around the Ferguson police station.
Police Chief Troy Doyle sent out a team of officers, which included Brown, to arrest those involved. Police video footage released Wednesday reveals the interaction between Brown and Elijah Gantt, 28, of East St. Louis. In one clip, Gantt runs directly into the officer, who falls backward and hits his head on the pavement.
Brown’s condition remained unchanged until Thursday.
“While we’ve been told that the road to recovery will be long and challenging, we remain hopeful,” Bailey wrote on GoFundMe as part of the update.
The fund, which has a goal of $150,000, had raised $105,021 from 1,400 individuals as of Thursday afternoon.
