Updated

The story of a Ferguson, Mo., police officer fatally shooting an 18-year-old African-American who was trying to surrender is one of the "most outlandish claims of 2015," says the Washington Post's fact checker.

Michael Brown was unarmed when he was killed on Aug. 9, 2014, by a white police officer, Darren Wilson.

Physical evidence ultimately established that Brown and Wilson had been engaged in a physical altercation at the time of the shooting. But initial eyewitness accounts claiming that the 18-year-old had raised his hands in surrender gave rise to the popularized "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" rallying cry of the Black Lives Matter movement, which seeks to address police brutality in minority communities.

"Witness accounts spread after the shooting that Brown had his hands raised in surrender, mouthing the words 'don't shoot' as his last words before being shot execution-style," the Post's fact checker, Glenn Kessler, wrote in his annual roundup of the year's "most outlandish claims."

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