A 20-year-old man charged with shooting two police officers watching over a protest outside the Ferguson Police Department has told investigators he was not targeting the officers.
St Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch said Jeffrey Williams told authorities he was firing at someone with whom he was in a dispute.
"We're not sure we completely buy that part of it," Mr McCulloch said, adding that there might have been other people in the vehicle with Mr Williams.
Mr Williams is charged with two counts of first-degree assault, one count of firing a weapon from a vehicle and three counts of armed criminal action. Mr McCulloch said the investigation is ongoing.
Tensions between police and the black community have been high in Ferguson since the fatal August 9 shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was black and unarmed, by now-former police officer Darren Wilson, who is white. Mr Wilson was cleared by a Justice Department report, and a grand jury declined to indict him in November.
The incident sparked a nationwide discussion about police relations with minority communities.
The two officers were shot early on Thursday as a crowd began to break up after a late-night demonstration that unfolded after Ferguson police chief Tom Jackson resigned in the wake of the scathing Justice Department report.
The federal report found widespread racial bias in the city's policing and in a municipal court system driven by profit extracted from mostly black and low-income residents. Six Ferguson officials, including Mr Jackson, have resigned or been fired since the report was released March 4.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article