Protesters blocked the intersection and initially ignored requests from officers in regular uniform to clear the street. According to reports, officers were conducting a search of a home based on a warrant when they saw two men run out of the house.
Advertisement
Mansur Ball-Bey, who police said had a handgun, was shot as officers raided a home in a violence-plagued part of north St. Louis.
In the past week alone, two officers from the department have resigned, including one who had been on the scene the night Hammond was shot.
According to Dotson, three stolen guns were found in the home of Ball-Bey following his death. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The second suspect is believed to be in his mid- to late teens.
No officers were injured. Dotson also reported that police made multiple arrests inside the house.
The protest was initially cleared by uniformed officers, but police in riot gear were called in after protesters threw rocks and bottles, Dotson said.
Rumors that a black teenager killed by St. Louis police was only 13 years old helped stoke angry clashes between police and protesters, a city alderman said on Thursday, and police said they were ready should protests flare anew. He didn’t specify which crimes, but he noted that a killing happened on the same street Monday and a nearby market had been recently riddled by bullets.
Numerous roughly 150 people who gathered at the scene hurled obscene gestures and expletives at investigators and questioned the police use of deadly force.
Activists say that they will continue protests over police brutality in the US.
And at around 9 p.m., individuals set aflame a mattress in the middle of the street on Page near Walton, a vehicle and an abandoned building in the 1300 block of Bayard. “What might have been accomplished totally different to de-escalate relatively than escalate? You’ve obtained to have the proper of cops to interact in a majority of these neighbourhoods”.
Another neighborhood resident, Fred Price, was skeptical about Dotson’s account that the suspect pointed a gun at officers before being mortally wounded.
“They provoked the situation”, he said.
It comes with tensions already high in the area after violence erupted during several events marking the anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old fatally shot last year by a police officer in nearby Ferguson.
Once the investigation is complete, their findings will be turned over to the Circuit Attorney’s Office for review.
Advertisement
Former officers Howard Weems and Marcus Eberhart of East Point, Georgia were indicted on multiple charges, including felony murder, in the April 2014 death of Gregory Towns, a 24-year-old unarmed black man whom the officers tased at least 14 times after handcuffing him.
