A protest over the fatal shooting of 20-year-old #BrandonWebber escalated into an all-out war against Memphis police.
On Wednesday night, U.S. Marshals shot and killed Brandon Webber in the north Memphis neighborhood of Frayser, officials said. Reports show authorities were trying to arrest Webber, who was wanted on several warrants. The warrants stemmed from an incident from June 3 which took place in Hernando, Mississippi, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said.
Webber “reportedly rammed his vehicle into the officers’ vehicles multiple times before exiting with a weapon,” the bureau said. “The officers fired striking and killing the individual. No officers were injured.” When the news of Webber’s killing spread throughout the city, it sparked an outrage and protests. Memphis residents began throwing rocks at the police and destroying squad cars and a fire station.
At least 25 police have been injured in the riots. Three people were arrested. “Every life lost should matter…every single one,” Tami Sawyer, a member of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners, wrote on Twitter late on Wednesday. “How many times will this be ok? It cannot continue to be.” The Marshals Service, a federal agency that is an arm of the Justice Department, released on Thursday, saying its employees had fired their weapons “in response to a threat posed by the subject.” Although the marshals did not describe the circumstances of the episode, they said that Mr. Webber had “multiple felony warrants.”
