Another police-involved fatal shooting of a teenager, this time in south St. Louis not far from the Missouri Botanical Garden, led to hours of protests overnight Wednesday and into Thursday morning as an angry crowd gathered quickly when news spread across social media.Let's step back and wait for details to actually come out. Unlike the Mike Brown story, this guy appears to have been armed and appears to have shot at the cop (for reasons that are unclear). Let's not conflate the two cases, just because a cop and a black teen were involved. That seems to be where the similarities end.
St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said the officer was off-duty, working a secondary job for a private security company, when he chased and fatally shot an 18-year-old male Wednesday night who came at him aggressively in a gangway.
The teen had a gun and fired at least three shots at the officer, who returned fire, the chief said. The teenager attempted to fire more but his gun jammed, Dotson said.
The officer was unhurt. The officer fired 17 times, he said. It is unclear how many times the teenager was struck. Police said they recovered a 9mm Ruger.
Relatives of the dead teen who came to the scene identified him as Vonderrit Myers Jr., 18. They disputed the police version. They say he didn't have a weapon. Police did not identify the 18-year-old but said he "was no stranger to law enforcement."
Jackie Williams, 47, said Myers was his nephew and lived with him in the 4200 block of Castleman Avenue, near the shooting scene. He said he had talked to several people who had been with his nephew or saw the shooting.
“My nephew was coming out of a store from purchasing a sandwich. Security was supposedly searching for someone else. They Tased him,” Williams said. “I don’t know how this happened, but they went off and shot him 16 times. That’s outright murder.”
Question: Is everyone going to jump to a conclusion here without waiting for more details?
