Pittsburgh police appeal for calm after cop fatally shoots unarmed black teen Antwon Rose

Doug Stanglin | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Raw: Police shooting protests near Pittsburgh For the second night, hundreds in Pennsylvania protested the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old boy, Antwon Rose Jr. Protesters demonstrated outside the East Pittsburgh police headquarters on Thursday and shut down a major interstate. (June 22)

East Pittsburgh officials called for calm Thursday in a western Pennsylvania community as police investigate the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a police officer who had been sworn in only hours before.

The officer, who has not been named by authorities, shot and killed 17-year-old Antwon Rose, who was fleeing a traffic stop Tuesday night in East Pittsburgh. The officer was on his first day on the job, according to East Pittsburgh Mayor Louis Payne.

Hundreds of East Pittsburgh residents protested Wednesday for almost five hours, blocking an expressway at one point to demonstrate their anger over the shooting. “If they want to shoot us, make them do it in our backs,” one speaker shouted into a megaphones, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

The shooting incident was partially captured on a cellphone video.

Payne said Wednesday that the officer was treated at a hospital for shock but had not been physically injured, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. Officials declined to identify the officer's name or race.

Rose and another passenger fled from a car that had been stopped by police in East Pittsburgh. Police say the car was possibly used in a non-fatal shooting 15 minutes earlier.

Protesters back out after rain subsides. Cars turning around as Tri-Boro expressway is blocked by those protesters. #WTAE pic.twitter.com/iMstkQUgwB — David Kaplan (@DKaplanWTAE) June 21, 2018

Officers found two semi-automatic handguns on the floor of the vehicle. Allegheny County Police Superintendent Coleman McDonough told reporters Wednesday he was confident the car in which Rose had been riding was involved in the incident, noting that a back window had been shot out.

The cellphone video, viewed by USA TODAY, shows a person fleeing from a vehicle stopped by a group of police. Three shots ring out as another figure, who remains at large, also runs away from cops. Both figures were hidden from view behind a home at the conclusion of the video.

"Why are they shooting at him? ... All they did was run," a voice off camera in the video says.

Debra Jones told the Associated Press her voice is the one caught on the video.

When the two passengers took off, “That officer didn’t try to chase them or tase them. He just shot that boy for running,” she said. “I looked out my kitchen window and they were putting him in handcuffs. He wasn’t moving. I think that boy died right there on the side of my house.”

When asked by reporters if Rose had been shot in the back, McDonough responded that the teen was shot in "various places on his body" and said the medical examiner would release further information, WTAE-TV reported.

He urged the community to give police time to investigate the incident, but said, "I understand in today's atmosphere anytime a young man is killed there's cause for outrage."

Lee Merritt, a civil rights lawyer representing Rose's family, said the teenager "was not armed and did not represent a threat to anyone at the time of the incident." Merritt said the facts known thus far "leave very little room to justify the use of deadly force by this officer."

Contributing: Joel Shannon and Mike James, USA TODAY