Jim Hoft, who’s based in St. Louis, claims he has two well-placed local sources who say yes.

The Gateway Pundit can now confirm from two local St. Louis sources that police Officer Darren Wilson suffered facial fractures during his confrontation with deceased 18 year-old Michael Brown. Officer Wilson clearly feared for his life during the incident that led to the shooting death of Brown. This was after Michael Brown and his accomplice Dorian Johnson robbed a local Ferguson convenience store.

Local St. Louis sources said Wilson suffered an “orbital blowout fracture to the eye socket.” This comes from a source within the District Attorney’s office and confirmed by the St. Louis County Police.

If Brown, a big man, punched Wilson in the face while they were jawing at each other through the squad car window, that would explain why Brown took off running and why Wilson took off after him. Then again, you don’t need to imagine any physical contact between Brown and Wilson to explain that. If Wilson had said, “Hey, you’re the guy who just robbed the convenience store!”, that might have sent Brown running too.

Is there any corroborating evidence that Brown hit Wilson in the face? Yeah, sort of. If “Josie,” the now famous caller to Dana Loesch’s radio show, really is who she says she is, then Wilson himself told her that Brown punched him.

https://twitter.com/emmaroller/status/501444867600687105

“Just shoves him back into his car, punches him in the face, and then of course Darren grabs for his gun.” And yet — Josie doesn’t claim that Brown busted Wilson’s eye, a detail you’d think she would want to mention to emphasize the severity of the attack. Also, if you look back at the cellphone video captured by Piaget Crenshaw, you’ll see Wilson standing by Brown’s body with no apparent injury and seemingly in no distress from what allegedly would have been a nasty eye injury.

Most obvious of all, if Hoft’s sources are right, why haven’t we heard this already from Ferguson PD? It seemed odd when they let days go by before releasing the convenience store surveillance video of Brown, but there’s an explanation for that in hindsight. The DOJ was pressuring them not to release the footage, believing that it was immaterial to what happened later between Brown and Wilson and would be prejudicial to the public’s understanding of the case. The cops probably also wanted to let a bit of time pass between Brown’s death and releasing the video, lest they be accused of impeaching his character before the body was even cold. There’s no obvious reason, though, for them not to release information about Wilson supposedly being punched in the face and having his eye socket fractured by Brown if that’s what happened. It’s germane to Wilson’s self-defense claim and it’ll come out at trial, neither of which is necessarily true about the convenience store tape. Even if the feds are pressuring them to hush it up, there’s no reason why the police would respect that request if they were willing to defy the DOJ on the surveillance video. A busted eye would be the best evidence offered so far that Wilson was dealing with a serious threat to his safety — and yet the cops have said nothing about it. How come?