Grand jury soon to decide on teen shooting A STATE of emergency has been declared and the US National Guard activated ahead of a grand jury decision on whether a white police officer will be charged in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen. A GRAND jury is to decide whether Darren Wilson will be charged over the death on August 9 of 18-year-old Michael Brown in the US city of St Louis. There's no date for a decision, and no indication an announcement is imminent, but officals have previously said the jury is expected to reveal a decision in mid-to-late November. Brown's shooting stirred long-simmering racial tensions in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson, where two-thirds of the residents are black but the police force is almost entirely white. Rioting and looting a day after the shooting led police to respond to subsequent protests with a heavily armoured presence that was widely criticised for continuing to escalate tensions. Missouri governor Jay Nixon says he hopes and expects that peace will prevail, but says the National Guard will help police if the grand jury's decision leads to a resurgence of civil unrest. "We have a responsibility - I have a responsibility - to plan for any contingencies that might arise," Nixon said. The grand jury is considering if there's enough evidence to charge Wilson with a crime and, if so, what the charge should be. If it issues an indictment, a separate jury will be selected to decide whether Wilson is guilty. Before the shooting, Wilson spotted Brown and a friend walking along a street and told them to stop, but they did not. Wilson has reportedly told authorities he then realised Brown matched the description of a suspect in a convenience store robbery minutes earlier. Wilson backed up his police car and some sort of confrontation occurred before the unarmed Brown was fatally shot.