FERGUSON, August 20 (RIA Novosti) - Demonstrations over the police killing of an unarmed African-American teenager switched from the downtrodden suburb of Ferguson to a nearby prosecutor’s office on Wednesday as protestors called for justice, a RIA Novosti correspondent reports.
Demonstrators gathered outside St. Louis County prosecutor's office in Clayton waving banners and calling for the arrest of police officer Darren Wilson over the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed teen, as he walked with a friend on a residential street on the afternoon of August 9.
The nation's top law official, US Attorney General Eric Holder, was headed to Ferguson, Missouri, on Wednesday, in an effort to convince angry residents of a credible probe amid widespread fears that local police officers are above the law.
“We understand the need for an independent investigation, and we hope that the independence and thoroughness of our investigation will bring some measure of calm to the tensions in Ferguson,” Holder wrote in an opinion article in a local newspaper on Wednesday.
Ferguson, a predominantly African-American suburb of St. Louis, has been shaken by protests and looting since Brown’s killing. Some 50 protestors were arrested on Tuesday during late-night demonstrations that were calmer than previously.
Missouri National Guard troops have been deployed to tackle the violence, which has grown fiercer as peaceful protestors were joined by looters from California and New York, police said. Law enforcers have been criticized for using tear gas, rubber bullets and other heavy-handed measures.
