U.S.
LAWRENCE BRYANT / Reuters
An autopsy on the black teenager shot and killed by white St. Louis police officers earlier this week shows the 18-year-old died from a single gunshot wound in his back, police said on Friday.
The results of the post-mortem examination by the city's medical examiner in the death of Mansur Ball-Bey are preliminary and an investigation of the incident continues, police said in a statement.
The finding may escalate tensions that flared immediately after the shooting Wednesday, as protesters and family members of the slain teen questioned police accounts that Ball-Bey pointed a gun at them as he fled from a home where police were serving a search warrant.
St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper that the location of the fatal wound neither proves nor disproves the account given by the two officers who said they fired four rounds at Ball-Bey.
“Just because he was shot in the back doesn't mean he was running away,” Dotson told the newspaper. “It could be, and I'm not saying that it doesn't mean that. I just don't know yet.”
"What I do know is that two officers were involved and fired shots, but I don't know exactly where they were standing yet and I won't know until I get their statements."
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that killings by St. Louis police are reviewed separately by the Force Investigation Unit, and Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce's office.
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.
Wednesday's shooting came on the first anniversary of the police shooting of another black man in St. Louis, Kajieme Powell. Protesters were already in the area for a march protesting his shooting.
“We were supposed to be remembering #KajiemePowell, not watching the city burn,” Hands Up United, a racial justice organization, posted on social media.
At least nine people were arrested in the St. Louis demonstration, with protesters reporting that police began firing smoke and tear gas without warning.
Dotson, in a news conference Wednesday evening, said police gave repeated warnings by bullhorns before firing smoke and tear gas at the protesters.
The police chief added that bricks, water bottles and other objects were being hurled at police. At least one car was set on fire, and furniture and other items were burned in piles on the street.
Kayla Reed, an activist with the Organization for Black Struggle, told the St. Louis Post Dispatch that police were too aggressive towards a crowd that “never was all that big.”
“A young man was killed by STL Police today and now the cops are responding to community turnout w/ gas and arrests,” Ferguson Action, a rights group formed after Brown's death, tweeted.
Law enforcement in Ferguson, as well as other locations like Baltimore, have been criticized over the past year for the aggressiveness of responses to protests over racial injustice and police killings.
The flare-up in St. Louis comes less than two weeks after the city was flooded with protesters from around the country marking the anniversary of the Aug. 9, 2014, police killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer in nearby Ferguson.
Brown's death was one of a series of police killings of unarmed black men and teens across the United States that sparked a newly energized civil rights movement under the banner "Black Lives Matter."
Al Jazeera and wire services
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