Group raised suspicions before 5 were shot

Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS

Protesters demanding justice for a black man fatally shot by Minneapolis police were settling in for their ninth night of demonstrations when something just didn’t seem right.

Lingering in the crowd were four people who seemed out of place. They were asked to leave. Moments later, shots rang out about a block away.

“I really did think it was like firecrackers or something initially because it was so loud and there was like this acrid smell,” protester Jie Wronski-Riley said. “I thought, ‘Surely, they are not shooting at us.’”

Then Wronski-Riley heard the cries of wounded people on the ground. “I really understood the danger we were in and what had happened.”

Police say five people were shot in the attack, which unfolded late Monday near a police precinct where dozens of protesters have been camped out since the Nov. 15 fatal shooting of Jamar Clark. None suffered life-threatening wounds.

Authorities arrested a 23-year-old white man, who remained in custody Tuesday evening, and a 32-year-old Hispanic man, who was later released. Two more men – both white, ages 26 and 21 – turned themselves in Tuesday afternoon.

According to police, Clark was shot after he struggled with officers. But some people who said they saw the shooting said the 24-year-old was handcuffed.

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said it will be up to a grand jury to decide whether to bring charges against officers in Clark’s death.

Freeman issued a statement Tuesday after repeated requests by black activist groups to make the decision himself rather than go to a grand jury. Protesters have complained that grand juries are unlikely to indict police officers.

After marching from the Fourth Precinct police station in north Minneapolis, the site of constant protests since Clark was shot, to Minneapolis City Hall downtown, several hundred people gathered outside the station Tuesday night for a concert. The diverse crowd, which included a number of children, listened to hip-hop music and soul classics such as “A Change Is Gonna Come.”