2 officers shot near St. Louis
FERGUSON, Mo. — Police were seeking suspects yesterday in what appeared to be the unrelated shootings of two police officers in and near Ferguson, which has remained on edge since a black man was shot to death by a white police officer last month.
The shooting of an officer Saturday night in the St. Louis suburb did not seem linked to peaceful protests occurring elsewhere in the city, police said, nor was it connected to a separate shooting involving an off-duty police officer in St. Louis early yesterday.
Neither officer received lifethreatening injuries, the St. Louis County Police Department said.
No arrests had been made as of yesterday afternoon, police Sgt. Brian Schellman said.
In the first incident, the officer had seen a man in the Ferguson Community Center at about 9 p.m. on Saturday. The man ran away and then turned and shot the officer in the arm during a foot chase, Schellman said.
The officer, who was treated in a hospital, returned fire but apparently did not hit the shooter, who disappeared into the woods, Schellman said.
Three hours later, an off-duty St. Louis city police officer driving his personal vehicle on I-70 was shot at and suffered a minor arm injury from broken glass, Schellman said.
It was not clear if the officer was a target or the shooting was random, Schellman said. The officer, who was wearing his uniform pants but not his uniform shirt, did not return fire, the sergeant said.
Ferguson has seen weeks of sometimes-violent demonstrations since the death of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man who was shot by white police officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9.
A crowd of about 100 people who gathered near the scene of Saturday night’s shooting, as well as a group that broke off to protest at Ferguson police headquarters, remained peaceful, said a witness.
On Thursday, Ferguson police Chief Tom Jackson issued a video apology to Brown’s parents after weeks of heavy criticism and calls for his ouster.
The apology was not wellreceived among some. Many in Ferguson, a mostly black community of 21,000, have said Jackson should be fired for what they saw as a heavy-handed response in the aftermath of Brown’s killing.
Information from the Los Angeles Times was included in this story.