St. Louis Shooting: Berkeley Mayor Urges People to remain Calm

By Staff Reporter - 25 Dec '14 04:57AM

The mayor of the St. Louis suburb of Berkeley asked people to remain calm Wednesday after a white police officer killed a black 18-year-old who allegedly pointed a gun at the police. Three others were injured in the incident.

Berkeley mayor, Theodoe Hoskins, said that the surveillance footage shows clearly 18-year-old Antonio Martin pointing a gun at the police just before his death, BBC reports.

The incident reignited tensions that had followed the death of another black teenager Michael Brown in the neighbouring area of Ferguson.

St. Louis Police spokeswoman Schron Jackson said that the incident happened late afternoon Tuesday at 17th and Pine, where officers were called around 5:30 p.m. She added that four people had been shot, one of which were declared dead at the spot.

The other three were admitted to a hospital and are currently in a critical condition, according to St. Louis Fire Captain Garon Mosby.

Following the shooting, nearly 300 gathered at the gas station where Martin was shot and threw rocks and bricks in protest. On Wednesday, a relatively smaller crowd gathered met at the gas station for a vigil and marched to Interstate 170. Berkeley Police Chief Frank McCall told KMOV-TV that six to eight people were arrested, the Associated Press reports.

There was no video that could serve as evidence in Brown's shooting, nut in this case there is a video.

"You couldn't even compare this with Ferguson or the Garner case in New York," Hoskins said, referring to the chokehold death of Eric Garner, another black man killed by a white police officer.