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Protests, looting in US city after police shoot unarmed teen

File photo for illustration shows law enforcement officials surrounding a house in St. Louis, Missouri on March 8, 2011/AFP

File photo for illustration shows law enforcement officials surrounding a house in St. Louis, Missouri on March 8, 2011/AFP

WASHINGTON, Aug 11 – Protesters clashed with police and looted stores in a suburb of the US city of St. Louis after an officer shot dead an unarmed black teen, local media reported Monday.

Police armed with clubs hurled tear gas and deployed officers with dogs to curb the violence that erupted late Sunday in Ferguson, in the Midwestern state of Missouri, reports said.

But local law enforcement officers were quickly overwhelmed and had to urgently call for backup from nearby communities, according to KSDK TV 5.

Video posted by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch showed a gas station convenience store plundered and set on fire.

Looters also raided a Walmart and several other smaller stores, and set fires elsewhere, the newspaper reported.

The violence broke out after large crowds of mostly African-American protesters gathered Sunday for a vigil at the spot where police shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown a day earlier.

Details of Brown’s death differ. A witness identified as Dorian Johnson told KMOV News 4 that he was walking with Brown when a police officer confronted them and drew his weapon.

The officer shot Brown, who “turned around and put his hands in the air,” Johnson said. “He started to get down and the officer still approached with his weapon drawn and fired several more shots.”

St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar, however, said at a televised Sunday news conference that Brown was killed after physically assaulting a police officer and struggling to get his weapon.

Belmar did not say whether the officer was white.

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But the Post-Dispatch said the incident brings to light the tension between the mostly white local police force and the African-American community.

The St. Louis County chapter of the NAACP civil rights group said in statements that it has launched an investigation, and is calling for a meeting Monday “in response to the recent murder of Mike Brown.”

Chapter president Esther Haywood also called on the community to “settle down” in an interview with KSDK 5 TV station.

Brown’s grief-stricken mother, Lesley McSpadden, told KMOV TV that her son had just graduated from high school and had planned to attend college.

“Do you know how hard it was for me to get him to stay in school and graduate? You know how many black men graduate? Not many,” she told TV station KMOV. “Because you bring them down to this type of level, where they feel like they don’t got nothing to live for anyway.”

Brown’s family has hired attorney Benjamin Crump to represent them, the Post-Dispatch said.

Crump is the lawyer who represented the family of Trayvon Martin, the black teen shot and killed in Florida by George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watchman, in February 2012.

Zimmerman, a mixed-race Hispanic who pleaded self defence, was acquitted the following year of second-degree murder and manslaughter – sparking anger among many Americans who thought his actions had been racially motivated.

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