Gunshots rang out and police lobbed tear gas at an angry crowd that threw bottles outside the Ferguson Police Department in suburban St. Louis after a grand jury decided not to indict a white officer in the shooting death of an unarmed black teen.
Outrage over the decision fueled what had been mostly peaceful protests across the United States on Monday, including in New York City where marchers chanting "Black lives matter" snarled traffic on Broadway through Times Square.
Police in Ferguson used smoke canisters and trucks to force waves of violent protesters down the street away from the police building soon after sporadic gunshots were heard. Flames from a burning car rose into the night sky.
"Murderers, you're nothing but murderers," protesters in the crowd shouted. One woman, speaking through a megaphone said, "Stinking murderers."
Dozens of police and military vehicles were poised for possible mass arrests not far from the stretch of Ferguson streets that saw the worst of the rioting after Wilson shot Brown in August.
The grand jury found there was no probable cause to charge Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson, who is white, with any crime for the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, an incident that highlighted longstanding racial tensions in thepredominantly black city, which has a white-dominated power structure.
"They determined that no probable cause exists to file any charge against officer Wilson," St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch told reporters in Clayton, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis where the grand jury met.
Brown's family said they were "profoundly disappointed" by the grand jury's finding.
"While we understand that many others share our pain, we ask that you channel your frustration in ways that will make a positive change," the family said in a statement released by its attorneys.
A crowd of several hundred people gathered outside the Ferguson Police Department ahead of the news, and many began to scream angrily as the news of the grand jury's decision was read.
