Students rally in Madison after police shoot unarmed black teen

University and high school students in Madison, Wisconsin, walked out of classes Monday morning and marched to protest the fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Tony Robinson by a white police officer, local media reported.

More than 100 students — including some from 19-year-old Robinson’s alma mater, Sun Prairie High School — marched toward Wisconsin's Capitol grounds, Madison.com and Channel3000.com reported.

Madison.com said students from East High School and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, a Big Ten school of more than 40,000 students, were also involved. Madison is a center of progressive politics in a state sharply divided by left and right partisanship.

Posts on social media showed dozens of high school and university students marching and chanting "Tony Robinson" and carrying signs reading "Black lives matter." Police and school officials were not immediately available for comment.

Robinson's death was the latest in a string of police shootings that have intensified concerns about racial bias in U.S. law enforcement agencies.

Officer Matt Kenny, who shot Robinson, is on paid administrative leave while the Wisconsin Department of Justice investigates the shooting.

Kenny, 45, responded to reports of battery and a man dodging cars in traffic Friday night. He followed the suspect into an apartment, where Robinson struck him on the head, according to Madison Police Chief Mike Koval. Kenny then shot the unarmed teen, who died later in a local hospital.

In a statement issued Monday, Koval expressed regret for the killing. “The police are part of this community — and we share this sense of loss,” he said.

“Reconciliation cannot begin without my stating ‘I am sorry,’ and I don't think I can say this enough.  I am sorry. I hope that, with time, Tony's family and friends can search their hearts to render some measure of forgiveness.”

Kenny, a 12-year veteran of the Madison Police Department, was exonerated in 2007 after he shot and killed a 48-year-old man who had pointed a gun at officers and refused to drop it. The gun was later determined to be a replica, not a real weapon.

Wisconsin court records show that Robinson pleaded guilty to armed robbery last year and received a probated six-month sentence.

Court documents also describe Robinson as suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and indicate that he tended to be an impulsive risk-taker. Documents connected to the teen’s conviction last year for armed robbery show he was diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety and depression, and was prone to boredom and anger.

Protests and vigils in Madison over the weekend were peaceful, and Koval and Mayor Paul Soglin pledged transparency in communicating the results of the city’s investigation into the shooting.

The police shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, set off weeks of protests around the United States last year.

Madison, with 240,000 people, is mostly white, with black residents accounting for 7 percent of the population, U.S. Census figures show.

Al Jazeera and wire services