Officers hit in face and shoulder after shots fired at protest outside Ferguson, Missouri, police department, hours after city’s police chief announced his resignation

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Two police officers have been shot during a protest in Ferguson, according to the St Louis county police department.

Gunfire was heard at the protest outside the police department of Ferguson, Missouri, shortly after midnight Central time on Thursday morning.

The St Louis County police chief Jon Belmar, said at a press briefing: “These police officers were standing there and they were shot, just because they were police officers.”

The officers sustained “serious gunshot wounds to face and upper torso”, according to Belmar. One was from St Louis County and one was from Webster Groves. The Webster police officer is 32 years old and has been on the force for five years. No information was provided about the other officer.

Belmar also told reporters that “the night was fairly uneventful until about midnight.”

He said the crowd was beginning to break up when several shots were fired. The Webster Grove officer was shot in the face, and the St Louis county officer was shot in the shoulder.

A police source told the St Louis Post-Dispatch that both officers were expected to survive. Belmar said the officers were both conscious and being treated at a local hospital.



Asked to confirm protesters’ accounts that the shots were fired from people outside the group of demonstrators, Belmar said: “I don’t know who did the shooting to be honest with you right now, but somehow they were embedded in that group of folks.”

A few dozen demonstrators fled after the sound with some screaming, “They hit a cop,” around midnight, the photographer said.

Witness told the Los Angeles Times that they had heard around three shots fired. Video shared on social media purporting to be from the scene appeared to confirm this.



Several dozen protesters had gathered in front of the Ferguson police department earlier on Wednesday night, just hours after the city’s police chief, Thomas Jackson, announced his resignation.

Protesters had called for Jackson’s removal since the fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson on 9 August 2014. The killing triggered nationwide protests and drew scrutiny to police use of deadly force, especially against black men.

Jackson’s departure was the latest in a string of officials who stepped down following a scathing report from the US Justice Department that found widespread racially biased abuses in the city’s police department and municipal court.



Twitter user @search4swag posted video online purporting to be from the scene shortly after the shooting. In it, police crouch behind shields and crawl on the ground while a male voice says that the shot came from Tiffin Avenue. The Guardian has not been able to verify the footage independently.