Two St. Louis city police officers shot and killed a Black man who came within several feet of them brandishing a knife on Tuesday a few miles from the turbulent suburb of Ferguson, authorities said. A crowd of at least 100 people quickly gathered at the scene. Some people chanted, “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” — the refrain from a week of protests over the police killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, three miles away.
The man in the St. Louis shooting, 23, had taken energy drinks and a package of pastries from a nearby convenience store, Police Chief Sam Dotson told reporters. He said that the man was “acting erratically, walking back and forth, up and down the street.”
