Residents confront cops after black US teen killed
Print Edition
THE shooting of the black American teenager sent hundreds of angry residents on to the streets in a predominantly black Missouri city in a confrontation with police that lasted several hours. They shouted obscenities and some threats, such as “kill the police,” but there were no reports of additional injuries.
The teenager’s grandmother, Desiree Harris, saw the 18-year-old recent high school graduate running near her home on Tuesday afternoon when she passed him in her car. Minutes later, she found his body on the street — fatally shot by a police officer.
Harris said she was expecting her grandson, Michael Brown, to visit her that afternoon and discovered him dead after she heard the commotion outside the apartment complex in Ferguson, a suburb of St Louis.
“He was running this way. When I got up there, my grandson was lying on the pavement. I asked the police what happened. They didn’t tell me nothing.”
Brown’s mother, Lesley McSpadden, told an acquaintance the shooting was “wrong and it was cold-hearted,” the St Louis Post-Dispatch reported, adding that Brown’s stepfather, Louis Head, held a sign that read: “Ferguson police just executed my unarmed son!!!”
A spokesman with the St Louis County Police Department, which is investigating the shooting at the request of the local department, confirmed a Ferguson police officer shot the man. The spokesman didn’t give the reason for the shooting.
Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson told the Post-Dispatch that the officer involved has been placed on paid administrative leave. “We are hoping for calm and for people to give us a chance to conduct a thorough investigation,” Jackson said.
John Gaskin, a member of the St Louis County NAACP civil rights group, said the FBI should get involved “to protect the integrity of the investigation.”
He alluded to the 2012 racially-charged shooting of 17-year-old high school student by a Florida neighborhood watch organizer who was subsequently acquitted of murder charges, as well as the death of a New York man from a police chokehold after he was confronted for selling individual cigarettes on the street.
Harris said her grandson had recently graduated from high school and was looking forward to the future.
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