The shooting death of 18-year-old Mansur Ball-Bey sent the city of St. Louis into unrest as citizens gathered in protest after the teen was fatally gunned down by police.
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The shooting came 10 days after the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson was flooded with protesters marking the first anniversary of the August 9 fatal shooting of 18-year-old Brown by a white police officer.
The handgun found in the dead man’s possession had one round in the chamber and 13 in the magazine, Dotson said.
“My client fired in defense of his partner”, said Brian Millikan, who is representing both officers who fired at Mansur Ball-Bey. In the video released after protests held on Wednesday over Ball-Bey’s killing, officers are heard yelling “Rock!”
Police said officers were in the neighborhood “as it has been plagued by violence“. Messages left Friday with St. Louis’ chief medical examiner and that office’s investigator weren’t returned. Further, one of the medical examiners that wrote the report told the Ball-Bey family’s attorney, Jermaine Wooten, that since Ball-Bey was hit in an artery, he would have collapsed nearly immediately and not been able to continue running as police claim he did.
“I have not seen anything in their disciplinary histories that causes me pause”, Dotson said.
Brown’s death sparked months of sometimes violent protests and demands for a range of police reforms, including mandatory body cameras. Some chanted “Black Lives Matter”, a slogan popularized after a white police officer killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson, Mo., last summer.
“We have more information today than we did yesterday”, Dotson said.
The two officers involved in Wednesday’s shooting were placed on administrative leave, per police policy.
“Ask them to help protect the city that we love”, Joyce said during a Friday evening news conference. Undercover officers wearing bulletproof vests were stationed at the rear of the house and they ordered Mr. Ball-Bey and the other man to stop and drop their guns.
He died from a single wound in the back, according to police officials.
Another community member named Fred Price said he was skeptical about Dotson’s account that the suspect pointed a gun at officers, The Associated Press reported.
Sheerer, 25, was arrested Friday night at his home in Barnegat, police said.
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The officers were serving a search warrant in a crime-ridden neighbourhood when they saw two young black men flee the house, and a short chase ensued, police said. Officers were also continuing to respond to reports of burglaries nearby, he said. “Situations like this make us want to keep the police out of the neighborhood”. And while such activism may engender a level of satisfaction among those who view virtually every encounter between police and minorities as one of racial victimization, that satisfaction comes with a bad price tag attached to it: St. Louis’s homicide rate is on target to reach its highest level in two decades, already exceeding 100 murders by the end of July.
