SEATTLE — The Seattle Police Department said Wednesday it was investigating the death of a 16-year-old Somali-American boy who died Saturday after a fall from a balcony near Seattle Central College, where he had been taking classes.

The death of the boy, Hamza Warsame, has prompted outrage among members of the Muslim community here, amid assertions — it is not clear from whom — that he was beaten and pushed to his death by a white man. This account was spread online through a hashtag on Twitter and Facebook, #Justice4Hamza.

On Wednesday, scores of protesters, including members of the boy’s family, who are Muslim, marched to the local police precinct shouting for justice and calling the death a possible hate crime.

Details are sketchy. No cause of death or autopsy report has been released, and Hamza’s sister, Ikram Warsame, 18, said in an interview that she did not know what happened and was not ruling out the possibility of an accident. But she was adamant that he did not take his own life.