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Death of teenager Michael Brown at the weekend likened to Trayvon Martin
THE FATAL shooting of a black teenager at the hands of police in America on Saturday (Aug 9), has sparked outrage across the world.
High school graduate Michael Brown, 18, was shot and killed by police near St. Louis after reportedly attempting to run from officers who had apprehended him on suspicion of shoplifting.
The bleeding body Brown, who was reportedly unarmed, was then left on the residential street as people stood taking pictures behind the police cordon.
Authorities confirmed Brown was shot by police in Ferguson, Missouri, a predominately African-American suburb of St. Louis. Few details of the shooting are currently known, but Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson told the AP a second person involved in the altercation is being questioned. As of yet, the person has not been arrested or charged.
JUSTICE: Lesley McSpadden, left, is comforted by her husband, Louis Head, after her 18-year-old son, Michael Brown was shot by police and killed in the middle of the street in Ferguson, Missouri
Following news of the shooting, calls for justice spread quickly throughout the Internet on Saturday and continued into Sunday when Brown’s name trended on Twitter for several hours, along with hashtags such as #JusticeForMike. Several “Justice for Mike” pages popped up on Facebook as well, with one page amassing several hundred “likes” per hour as of Sunday afternoon. Another Facebook page had attracted nearly 4,000 likes before it was removed without explanation Sunday.
John Gaskin, a member of the St. Louis County NAACP, likened the incident to the deaths of Trayvon Martin in Florida and Eric Garner in New York, the latter of whom died at the hands of the NYPD after an altercation in Staten Island last month. AP reported Gaskin said the FBI should intervene quickly to “protect the integrity” of the investigation into Brown’s death.
QUESTIONS: St Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar
“With the recent events of a young man killed by the police in New York City and with Trayvon Martin and with all the other African-American young men that have been killed by police officers ... this is a dire concern to the NAACP, especially our local organization,” Gaskin said.
A photo of a man identified by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as Louis Head - Brown’s stepfather - was widely circulated on Twitter and Facebook Sunday. In it, the man is holding a sign that reads “Ferguson police just executed my unarmed son!!!”
NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE: Michael Brown's stepfather Louis Head holds up damning sign
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Brown was a 2014 graduate of Normandy High School and was scheduled to begin classes on Monday at Vatterott College career training institute. Shortly after the shooting, hundreds of outraged Ferguson residents spilled out of their apartments and confronted local authorities, shouting obscenities and threating comments like “kill the police.”