The St. Louis prosecutor said Friday that her office is conducting an investigation into the death of Mansur Ball-Bey, a teenager shot in the back during an encounter with two St. Louis police officers this week, reports St. Louis Today.
Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce announced that her office will conduct an investigation into the shooting at the same time as police, a departure from the past practice of awaiting the results of the law-enforcement probe before launching her own, the report says.
Ball-Bey, 18, died from a single shot that went through his back and struck his heart, a medical examiner said Friday in a finding that potentially contradicts the police account of the shooting Wednesday, reports Reuters.
Tensions flared in the community as protesters and Ball-Bey’s family members questioned the police account that Ball-Bey had pointed a gun at officers, the report says.
St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson made more officers available for the weekend in anticipation of more protests. Jermaine Wooten, an attorney representing Ball-Bey’s family, told CNN on Friday that no witnesses had seen the teenager with a gun, according to Reuters.
The shooting comes less than two weeks after protesters from across the country converged on the St. Louis area to mark the first anniversary of the shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown on Aug. 9, 2014, by a white police officer in Ferguson, a St. Louis suburb.
Read more at St. Louis Today and Yahoo! News.