Pittsburgh Protests erupt after cop cleared in shooting

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

The father of a slain black teenager pleaded for peace Saturday after the acquittal of a white police officer triggered an apparent retaliatory shooting at the defense attorney’s office and touched off protests in the streets of Pittsburgh.

Police put officers on 12-hour shifts until further notice.

The verdict late Friday in the deadly shooting of 17-year-old Antwon Rose II angered his family and civic leaders and prompted hundreds of people to gather Saturday afternoon at an intersection called Freedom Corner in the Hill District neighborhood, the historic center of black cultural life in Pittsburgh. One man held a sign with the names of black men killed by police around the U.S.

“It’s very painful to see what happened, to sit there and deal with it,” Rose’s father, Antwon Rose Sr., told the crowd. “I just don’t want it to happen to our city no more.”

Afterward, he told reporters: “I want peace, period, all the way around. ... Just because there was violence doesn’t mean that we counter that with violence.”

The mostly white crowd then marched through downtown Pittsburgh and other city neighborhoods, periodically blocking streets as they chanted, “Who did this? Police did this!” Police reported no immediate arrests or injuries.

Early Friday, five to eight shots were fired into the building where the officer’s attorney, Patrick Thomassey, works, police in nearby Monroeville said. No one was hurt. Police said they had been staking out the place as a precaution, and the gunfire erupted after they left to answer another call around midnight.

Former East Pittsburgh police Officer Michael Rosfeld was charged with homicide for shooting Rose as the unarmed teenager ran away from a traffic stop last June. Rosfeld testified that he thought Rose or another suspect had a gun pointed at him and that he fired to protect himself and the community.

Rose’s family is pressing ahead with a federal civil rights lawsuit filed against Rosfeld and East Pittsburgh, a small municipality about 10 miles from downtown Pittsburgh.