A few hundred people gathered for a moment of silence on Tuesday at the spot in the central USA city of Ferguson, Missouri, where Michael Brown was killed by a police officer two years ago.
Advertisement
About 75 protesters were lined up along Florissant Avenue when a auto came speeding by and hit one of the protesters. Some witnesses tried to block the vehicle from fleeing the scene.
Witness Sharon Cowan told AP news agency that the driver of the vehicle that ploughed through the crowd: “knocked the shoes off his feet”. No other injuries were reported.
The demonstration was to mark the second anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, the unarmed black 18-year-old fatally shot by a white police officer. Two people who were shaken up as people were fleeing from gunfire were taken to the hospital by ambulance.
The two-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s fatal shooting by an officer will be marked with a memorial service and a moment of silence on the Ferguson street where he died.
Ferguson spokesman Jeff Small said police responded to reports of gunfire but so far had found no evidence that anyone had been struck.
He told St Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper that there were bullet holes in the auto but no one had been hurt.
Earlier in the day, a few hundred people gathered for a memorial service and moment of silence along Canfield Drive at the spot where Brown was fatally shot by officer Darren Wilson after a confrontation on August 9, 2014. The officer, who resigned, was cleared by a state grand jury and the U.S. Justice Department, but the shooting led to a consent decree governing the Ferguson Police Department. It led to months of sometimes-violent protests in Ferguson.
Michael Brown Sr. said the teen’s death “opened the eyes of the world” to concerns about law enforcement’s treatment of minorities. This color is handsome.
Advertisement
The movement has grown following several other killings of black men and boys by police, including the deaths of Eric Garner in New York, Tamir Rice in Cleveland and Philando Castile in Minnesota. The federal agency and the city agreed in 2016 to make sweeping changes.
