A peaceful demonstration in Ferguson, Missouri, ended in violence Tuesday night when a auto sped through a group of protesters, striking and injuring one man, who was driven to the hospital.
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But shortly afterwards a protester, named locally as Jacoby Thomas, was hit by a auto.
Witness Sharon Cowan told AP news agency that the driver of the auto that ploughed through the crowd: “knocked the shoes off his feet”.
Bystanders can be heard screaming with others saying: “he hit him, he hit him”. As a crowd quickly gathered around the injured man, police say multiple gunshots were fired at the vehicle.
Police had found bullet holes in the vehicle but no arrests have been made and no one was shot, he said.
Police believe the incident was an accident and the driver, a woman who is being “very, very cooperative” with police, simply did not see the person.
According to Jeff Small, a Ferguson city spokesman, said the protester was standing in the roadway and the driver did not appear to intentionally target the person. News media initially reported that witnesses and activists claimed that Brown had his hands up and was shot while running away.
The man who was hit by the auto was taken away from the scene in a private vehicle, thus his condition is now unknown.
As of Wednesday morning, police say no arrests have been made. A grand jury declined to charge Wilson, and he was cleared of civil rights violations by the Justice Department. Darren Wilson resigned from the police force in November, 2014. It also paved the way for the establishment of “Black Lives Matter” movement admonishes the treatment meted out to the minorities by the state police.
The teenager’s father, also called Michael Brown, gave a brief speech at the memorial.
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The shooting led to a Justice Department investigation which found patterns of racial bias in Ferguson’s police department and court system. “This color is not a disease”. The federal agency and the city agreed in 2016 to make sweeping changes.
