It was kill or be killed.
The Ferguson cop who has been vilified for fatally shooting an unarmed teen said on Tuesday he only squeezed the trigger because he thought he was about to die.
“I have a clean conscience,” Darren Wilson said to ABC’s George Stephanopolous, who talked with him for an hour and a half at an undisclosed location in St. Louis. “I know I did my job right.”
Wilson, who was spared criminal charges by a grand jury Monday night, detailed the 90-second encounter that ended in him firing a series of shots that killed robbery suspect Michael Brown on Aug. 9.
The first thing he said to Brown was, “Hey, come here for a minute.”
Wilson said the young man refused, spitting back, “What the f–k are you going to do about it?” Brown, 18, then slammed his police car door shut and “threw the first punch” to Wilson’s left side.
The cop said he instantly feared for his life.
“I just felt the immense power that he had,” he said, admitting that he is also a big guy. “The way I’ve described it, is it was like a 5-year-old holding on to Hulk Hogan. That’s just how big this man was.”
In survival mode, he wondered whether he was legally allowed to fire his weapon.
“Can I shoot this guy?” Wilson said he asked himself. He decided the answer quickly.
“If I don’t, he’ll kill me,” he thought. “He will kill me if he gets to me.”
He said he believed he couldn’t “withstand another hit like that,” referring to the blistering blows Brown had struck him with.