Autopsy shows St. Louis teen was shot in the back by police

PROTEST OBSERVERS CLAIM POLICE REACTION TOO AGGRESSIVE: 10:35 p.m. A vehicle and a vacant house were set ablaze.

Mansur Ball-Bey died Wednesday – the one-year anniversary of Kajieme Powell’s death at the hands of police – when officers arrived at his aunt’s Fountain Park home to serve a search warrant.

The two officers involved in Wednesday’s shooting were placed on administrative leave, per police policy.

Ball-Bey, who police said did not fire, was struck and pronounced dead at the scene near the intersection of Walton Avenue and Page Boulevard.

The shooting sparked angry clashes between residents and police Wednesday night, with officers turning out in riot gear and using tear gas on some protesters.

Police need to do more to allow for peaceful protests rather than escalate them into violence, said Amnesty worldwide USA senior campaigner Jamira Burley, who was critical of St. Louis police actions taken Wednesday.

On Sunday, a 93-year-old Tuskagee Airman who lost his way pulled over in the neighborhood to call his daughter and was robbed.

Images of heavily armed police training weapons on citizens prompted U.S. President Barack Obama to tighten restrictions on police use of military equipment.

Police identified the slain suspect as Mansur Ball-Bey, 18.

“We have a policy that’s strong, a process that’s strong”, Dotson told the AP.

It was earlier reported that St. Louis police officers killed the 18-year-old while conducting a search on his home.

“The SWAT tank literally rode down a practically empty street and shot the gas into the air”, Brittany Packnett, executive director of Teach For America in St. Louis and a Ferguson Commission member, said on Twitter. “The question is whether when the officer shot, the officer truly believed the person they were shooting was a danger and whether that belief was reasonable”, said Saint Louis University law professor Marcia McCormick. And while such activism may engender a level of satisfaction among those who view virtually every encounter between police and minorities as one of racial victimization, that satisfaction comes with a bad price tag attached to it: St. Louis’s homicide rate is on target to reach its highest level in two decades, already exceeding 100 murders by the end of July.

Police said they dispersed the initial group of demonstrators without tear gas, but protesters returned and ended up in a cat-and-mouse game with officers. His father called that account “a bunch of lies” and insisted his son was unarmed.

“In every aspect of what we do in the Metropolitan Police Department, I want to be open and transparent”, Dotson said. Police haven’t released the full autopsy or toxicology tests yet, and they have not explained why they don’t yet have statements from the officers.

The police officers in St. Louis, which hit the headlines for its suburb Ferguson where Brown was killed, said the young man they fatally shot had pointed a gun at them. He ran out of the residence and pointed a gun at officers, authorities said.

The injured, all men in their 20s, have gunshot wounds that don’t appear to be life-threatening, police said.