New Turmoil Is Seen After St. Louis Officer Kills Black Teenager

St. Louis: Two months after a police officer's killing of an unarmed black teenager set off weeks of racial conflict in a suburb of this city, demonstrators said Thursday that the shooting death of a black teenager by a white police officer here was certain to add to the turmoil in the region.

Protesters demanded that the U.S. Justice Department open a federal inquiry into the Wednesday killing of Vonderrit D. Myers Jr., 18, who was shot after what the authorities termed a "physical altercation" with an off-duty St. Louis police officer who was patrolling the city's Shaw neighborhood for a private security firm.

The officer had been driving when he saw three men, and one of them began to run, the police said. He turned his vehicle and all of them began to run, the police said.

After a pursuit, the police said, Myers fired three rounds with a stolen handgun in the direction of the officer before the gun malfunctioned; the officer responded with 17 shots.

The police said they recovered ballistic evidence that showed Myers had opened fire, but family members disputed that account and said he had been unarmed. Instead, they said, he had been carrying a sandwich.

"The police are lying," Joseph Cotton, Myers' grandfather, said as he stood outside the family home on Thursday afternoon.

Soon after the shooting, hundreds of demonstrators appeared in the streets. The police said three department vehicles were damaged during the spontaneous protests.

"St. Louis is a racial powder keg," said Jerryl Christmas, who was involved in the demonstrations that shook nearby Ferguson, after a white officer there killed another 18-year-old, Michael Brown, on Aug. 9. "You've got the combination of this situation happening in St. Louis city and St. Louis County. It's not just Ferguson."

Myers' death came just before a planned "Weekend of Resistance" in the St. Louis region to protest law enforcement practices that have been under scrutiny since Brown, who was unarmed, died.

Brown's death is the subject of local and federal inquiries, and some here called for comparable reviews in the case of Myers. They said Myers may have been profiled when he and two other black men first attracted the attention of the officer, a six-year veteran of the St. Louis police force.

"White police officers are fearful of young black males, but that doesn't justify profiling them each and every day when they're out and about," said state Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, D-St. Louis.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment, but the St. Louis circuit attorney, Jennifer M. Joyce, said that an assistant U.S. attorney would be among the prosecutors reviewing the results of the police investigation.

"The federal prosecutor does have the authority to look for violations of federal civil rights," said Joyce, who added that the federal official would also be designated as a special assistant circuit attorney.

Myers was scheduled to stand trial for charges that included unlawful use of a weapon and resisting arrest.

In a probable-cause statement filed in late June, a St. Louis police officer wrote that Myers had been arrested after he fled from the authorities and dropped a pistol into a sewage drain.

Before his arrest, the police said, Myers had been a passenger in a vehicle that was part of a chase.

Peter M. Cohen, a lawyer who was representing Myers in the pending court case, described Myers on Thursday as "a quiet, respectful young man" and said that his survivors were distraught.

"They were hoping to be getting graduation clothes for him," Cohen said, "and now it's going to have to be funeral clothes."