Four men were charged with felonies on Monday in connection to the November 23 wounding of protesters in Minneapolis, the backdrop of a fatal shooting of a black man by Minneapolis police on November 15, Reuters reported.
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Scarsella will be charged with five counts of second-degree assault with a unsafe weapon and one count of second-degree riot while armed, and the other three men will receive only the riot charge, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.
The men, all from Minnesota, are Allen L. Scarsella III, 23, of Bloomington; Nathan Gustavsson, 21, of Hermantown; Daniel Macey, 26, of Pine City; and Joseph M. Backman, 27, of Minneapolis. We’ve seen too many horrific tapes of police violence without prosecution and conviction.
Protesters say they’ll stay outside the 4th Precinct until all video of the shooting is released and the case is stopped from being presented to a grand jury, which, protesters say, typically exonerate police in fatal shooting cases. Via the criminal complaint, they all gathered in Scarsella’s home afterward and were “panicking about the shooting and trying to decide what to do”. The activists contend that Clark was handcuffed when he was shot.
Demonstrators have camped out near the police station since Clark’s shooting and were undeterred on Monday by calls from Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges, U.S. Representative Keith Ellison and others to end the encampment for safety reasons.
A search warrant says one of the men called an old high school friend who is a Mankato police officer and confessed to the shootings.
Prosecutors have also filed charges against three men who were with the alleged gunman the night of the shooting.
Questions have been raised over whether Clark was handcuffed when he was shot, which police have denied.
Authorities in Minnesota say Clark was the suspect in an assault and that he interfered when paramedics tried to treat the assault victim. He had been shot in the leg at the 4th Precinct in Minneapolis.
Authorities later found text messages on Scarsella’s phone connecting him to the protests, as well as racist images and photos of him with guns, authorities said. Freeman says they considered hate crime charges, but the charges announced Monday carry a heftier sentence, with Freeman noting “this is the most serious crime we can charge under the circumstances”. After clashing with members of the crowd, the men allegedly attacked a group of protesters and shots were fired.
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A police union representative has said Clark grabbed one officer’s gun, although the weapon remained in its holster. Two already have come about: release of names of the two officers involved in the Clark shooting and the launch of an independent federal investigation.
