100 Protesters Block Streets After Officer Involved Shooting

About 100 protesters blocked city streets and freeway off-ramps in Oakland Wednesday night around the area where police officers shot and killed a robbery suspect earlier in the day.

The protesters gathered near the corner of 27th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, where the 24-year-old robbery suspect crashed his car after a police pursuit, allegedly tried to carjack another vehicle and advanced on officers with a gun before he was shot.

The man was taken to a hospital, where he died. His name has not yet been released. Protesters gathered in the area only a few hours after the fatal shooting -- the department’s third since May -- and after marching through downtown, they returned to the West Oakland shooting scene and blocked traffic coming off Interstate Highway 980.

There were scattered reports of vandalism from the march, including broken windows at a downtown Starbucks. The California Highway Patrol advised that off-ramps to Highway 980 at 27th Street were blocked as of about 10:30 p.m., backing up traffic as protesters standing at the base of the exit confronted frustrated drivers and piled debris in the roadway.

Police moved in within a few minutes, forming a line to push the protesters further down 27th Street. The protesters yelled back, “black lives matter” and “pigs go home.”

After the police line advanced a few blocks, most of the protesters scattered. At the corner of 27th Street and Martin Luther King, a makeshift memorial of several candles illuminated a cardboard sign that read, “Stop police murder.” Police said the confrontation with the allegedly armed suspect began near the corner of 69th Avenue and International Boulevard at 2:39 p.m. when officers patrolling there spotted a car believed to be connected with a July 27 armed robbery.

The officers tried to pull the car over, but the driver fled. Police pursued the car about seven miles through city streets while tracking him with a helicopter. The suspect crashed into another car on 27th Street between Northgate Avenue and Martin Luther King, ran from the crash scene and tried to carjack another driver. Police said as officers arrived, he allegedly moved toward them with a gun, prompting three officers to open fire.

He was wounded and died in a hospital a short time later. Police have not identified him except as a 24-year-old Oakland resident. They said a gun found at the scene was reported stolen. The three officers who opened fire were a 7-year veteran, a 6-year veteran and a 1-year veteran of the department, according to police. The department has not released their names.

The shooting was the fifth incident of Oakland police gunfire this year and the third to result in the death of a suspect. Prior to that, Oakland police had gone nearly two years without an officer-involved shooting, although several other law enforcement agencies shot suspects in the city of Oakland during that time. The Police Department’s internal affairs and homicide units are investigating the shooting along with the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.

--Story and Photo by Scott Morris, Bay City News