Activists were planning to gather in Cleveland on Saturday night in response to the fatal police shooting of a black teenager, Brandon Jones.



Eighteen-year-old Jones died on Thursday after a Cleveland Police Department officer shot him at approximately 2.15am earlier that day.

Police were responding to reports of a break-in at Parkwood Grocery store when Jones walked out carrying a bag. Officers tried to arrest him and a struggle ensued, leading an officer to fire his gun, police said.

Sergeant Ali Pillow, Cleveland police spokesman, said that no weapons were recovered at the scene and Cleveland city councilman Kevin Conwell said that community members believe the teenager was unarmed.

The deadly shooting in Cleveland comes amid a worsening relationship between police and black communities in the US, following the high-profile deaths of unarmed black men Michael Brown, 19, and Eric Garner, 43.

In Madison, Wisconsin, the shooting of 19-year-old Tony Robinson on 6 March has spurred ongoing demonstrations in the city. The incident drew comparisons to Brown’s death, which police chief Mike Koval acknowledged in the wake of the killing. “I can’t very well distance myself from that brutal reality,” Koval said.

Police said that the officer, whose name has not been released, fired his gun once during the confrontation. The department’s use of deadly force team is investigating the incident.

Jones was transported to MetroHealth Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

Parkwood Grocery owner Essex Hayward told ABC5 that Jones took some money and cigarettes from the shop, which he said had been robbed many times before.

Jones’s family is calling on people to join them on Saturday at 5pm where he was killed. They attended a rally on Friday organized by activist group Puncture the Silence.

The group has been helping coordinate demonstrations in the months since a Cleveland police officer shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice after mistaking his toy gun for a real firearm.

The city of Cleveland on Friday amended language it had used in response to a lawsuit filed by Rice’s family against the department. The new filing is largely the same but omits an earlier assertion that the child was responsible for his own death.



A Justice Department review released a month after Rice was killed said that the Cleveland police department engaged in “excessive and unreasonable force” in hundreds of cases in a three-year period up to 2013. The federal agency had previously warned the police department about its use of force in 2002 and 2005.

Michael Brown’s death in August 2014 inspired the creation of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has put increased pressure on local and federal governments to address disparities in the criminal justice system. Senior members of the Obama administration have since acknowledged that a better system needs to be in place for tracking police killings, which continue to cause ruptures in cities across the US.