Darren Seals, Ferguson activist, found dead inside burned-out car

Dylan Stableford
·Senior Writer

Darren Seals, one of the activists who led protests in response to the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., was found dead with a gunshot wound inside a burned-out car in nearby Riverview early Tuesday morning, the St. Louis County Police Department said.

After the flames were extinguished, police discovered Seals, 29, who appeared to have been shot. Officials are treating the case as a homicide.

According to the Nation, Seals was one of the first to arrive at the scene of Brown’s killing.

“It wasn’t even a protest yet,” Seals told the magazine in October 2014. “It was a black boy being shot in the community. It was about 10 other women and men out there, and the family.”

Seals was among those who stood alongside Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, outside the Ferguson police station listening to a radio broadcast of the St. Louis County prosecutor’s decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson in the death of her son.

“For Mike Brown’s mother to be right there in my arms crying — she literally cried in my arms — it was like I felt her soul crying,” Seals later told MTV.com. “It’s a different type of crying. I’ve seen people crying, but she was really hurt. And it hurt me. It hurt all of us.”

According to the New York Times, Seals had helped organize protests with Hands Up United, a group that was organizing a campaign — Polls Ova Police — to “use this year’s elections to challenge police policies.”

While many associate the Black Lives Matter with Ferguson protests, Seals was often critical, accusing the movement of capitalizing on Brown’s death.

Seals was also active on Twitter, where he described himself as a “Businessman, Revolutionary, Activist, unapologetically BLACK, Afrikan in AmeriKKKa, Fighter, Leader.”

Some of his most recent tweets referenced the controversy surrounding San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protest.

Twitter was also where fellow activists paid tribute to Seals following the news of his death.

Several others pointed to a recent claim by Seals of police harassment.

On Sept. 1, Seals pinned a tweet to his Twitter page.