Mother of Michael Brown loses race for Ferguson City Council

The mother of Michael Brown, a black teenager who was fatally shot by a police officer in the city of Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, lost her race for the City Council on Tuesday.

Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, lost a three-way race for the city’s 3rd Ward election. 

Unofficial results show Fran Griffin as the winner over McSpadden and incumbent Keith Kallstrom, The Associated Press reported.

{mosads}Brown, a black 18-year-old, was shot six times by white Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson in August 2014. His death sparked months of unrest and conflict in the St. Louis suburb. 

The FBI later concluded that Wilson had shot Brown in self-defense during a struggle for the officer’s gun. Protests continued in November 2014 when a grand jury in St. Louis County declined to indict Wilson, AP noted.

“I wanted to go back and do something right in a place that did something so very wrong to my son, and I think that’s what my son would want as well,” McSpadden told the outlet. 

The investigation, however, shined a national spotlight on police brutality and the fatal shootings of unarmed African-Americans.

McSpadden, 39, has been in the political spotlight since her son’s death and has become an active member of the national Black Lives Matter movement.

She said before the election that police accountability and oversight into the same police department where the officer worked would be her top priority if she won.

“I think they should work much harder to prove that they are there to protect and serve, because no one believed that in August 2014, and people are still skeptical,” McSpadden told the AP.