NEW YORK
A man was critically injured Sunday night in the U.S. city of Ferguson in an exchange of fire with police officers at a rally marking the first anniversary of the fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer.
The attacker had fired multiple shots at four St. Louis County plainclothes detectives before they fired back and the shooter was struck, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said, quoted by local media.
The man's identity has not been revealed by the police, but the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper identified him as 18-year-old Tyrone Harris Jr, having spoken to his father.
Belmar said there were several people who were firing shots during the rally, adding that "they were criminals ... not protesters".
The incident followed a day of peaceful protests and remembrance, in which several hundreds of people observed a four-and-a-half-minute silence around noon before releasing several white doves.
The duration of the tribute was meant to reflect the number of hours Brown's body remained in the street.
The crowd then held a silent march led by the slain teenager's father, Michael Brown Sr.
The 18-year-old's death in Ferguson ignited fierce street protests for months and saw fighting between police and protesters, making the small Missouri city a focal point of a national debate on race relations and allegations of police brutality.
In New York, several dozens of people gathered in Manhattan's Union Square to protest against police brutality and call for meaningful change in the U.S. justice system.
Protest organizer Travis Morales of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network said the killing of Michael Brown and the heavy-handed police crackdown on protesters "opened the eyes of millions of people here and around the world."
"We need to go forward and build on this. We aim to change the thinking of millions of people and bring forth a movement of millions that will not stop until the police murder of blacks and Latino people stops," he told Anadolu Agency.
Some protesters were carrying signs reading "Black lives matter" -- the slogan that became a rallying cry for protesters following a series of high-profile police-involved killings of unarmed black men across the country.
"Police throughout the country continue to be militarized," said Gloria Mattera, co-chair of the Green Party of New York.
She said social problems surrounding institutional racism, housing, education and unemployment had been compounded on top of police brutality against young blacks.
