Aaron Scott Arehart

Aaron Scott Arehart, a 42-year-old White man, died at 1:52 a.m. on June 5, 2007, at St. Louis University Medical Center in Missouri, after a violent encounter that left him with a gunshot wound. The published account of his death says he had been assaulted and then shot, a sequence that suggests a confrontation that turned brutal before the gunfire ended it.

In the days that followed, the details available to the public remained thin—more like the outline of a tragedy than a full recor ...