via The Daily Beast
Dozens of protesters surrounded the police department in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday to demand answers after officers fatally shot a 17-year-old black high school student during a traffic stop. The teenager, Antwon Rose, had been riding in a vehicle police pulled over late Tuesday in connection with a shooting elsewhere in the city minutes earlier. In a brief video of the incident captured on a witness’s cellphone, Rose can be seen running away from police officers before shots ring out and he falls to the ground. Allegheny County police Superintendent Coleman McDonough confirmed Wednesday that Rose was shot three times in the back after he “bolted” from the vehicle. The East Pittsburgh police officer who fired the fatal shots has been placed on leave pending an investigation of the incident. Rose’s family is demanding the officer be criminally prosecuted for what they see as an unjustified shooting, the family’s attorney, S. Lee Merritt, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.