St. Louis Teen Shot at 17 Times by Off-Duty Cop Sparks New Protests

Angry protests erupted again in St. Louis on Wednesday night after an 18-year-old man was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer — reigniting tensions in a city still reeling from the killing of Mike Brown in nearby Ferguson in August and the weeks of confrontations between residents and police that followed.

Vonderrit Myers — who like Brown, was African-American — was killed in a confrontation with an off-duty police officer who was working a second job at a private security company in the Shaw neighborhood of St. Louis.

Police say the unnamed officer was a six-year veteran of the St. Louis police department and that he responded with fire after the teen shot at him at least three times. The officer, who was not harmed, fired 17 times, though it is unclear how many times Myers was hit, police said.

Police also said they recovered a 9mm Ruger on the scene. But family members of the victim said the boy had no gun and was carrying only "a sandwich."

"He was unarmed," Teyonna Myers, who said she was a cousin, told the St. Louis Post Dispatch. "He had a sandwich in his hand, and they thought it was a gun. It's like Michael Brown all over again."

Syreeta Myers told the AP today that the victim was her son, and that he wasn't armed.

News of the shooting quickly spread over social media, and a few hundred people gathered to protest on the site of the incident, staying well into the night and shouting "black lives matter" — one of the slogans most common during the Ferguson protests of the last two months.

Jackie Williams, who said Myers was his nephew and lived with him, recalled witness accounts of the incident.

"My nephew was coming out of a store from purchasing a sandwich. Security was supposedly searching for someone else. They tased him," he said. "I don't know how this happened, but they went off and shot him 16 times. That's outright murder."

Police denied the officer had a taser.

They also said that Myers, who was a high school student, "was no stranger to law enforcement." According to online court documents viewed by VICE News, Myers was due in court in November on charges of unlawful use of a weapon and resisting arrest.

Police also said the officer clearly saw the teen was armed, and that police recovered three projectiles shot in the direction of the officer.

A police spokesman said nobody was arrested.

Cheyenne Green, a member of the Lost Voices — a group of local youth who organized in the wake of the Mike Brown rallies — was at last night's protest until 3am.

"Last night there was a guy killed. He was a junior. He got shot 16 times by the cops," she said today.

"I think it was wonderful to see that many people, white, black, Mexicans, in solidarity, fighting for justice, standing our ground, having the cops back down," she added.

The shooting comes just before "Ferguson October" — a weekend of protests planned by local residents scheduled to start on Friday.

Groups from across the country have pledged to show up in Ferguson to show solidarity, and organizers have said they expect 6,000 to 10,000 people to participate.

Catégories