A man, 20, identified as Jeffrey Williams, was arrested and charged regarding the shooting of two police officers from Ferguson, Missouri, but he claims that he was not aiming at the officers as he was in a dispute with someone else.
Williams was charged with first-degree assault and gun violation as announced by St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch on Sunday and he is currently kept in jail with a US$300,000 bond, Xinhua reported.
The shooting happened last Thursday during a protest outside the Police Headquarters and Williams shot the officers by accident from a car. Due to this incident, the tension in the area is at an all-time high between the protesters and the police officials as officers have been guarding the police station since the shooting while the protesters criticized the officers for thinking that the shooting was done by one of them.
However, Williams' statement regarding the shooting and his recall of what happened that day caused the prosecutors to doubt his claims. Williams said he attended the protest and other previous rallies but according to the leaders of the protests, Williams never joined them in the past, The New York Times reported.
Williams was also on probation at the time of the shooting due to possessing stolen property. He also shared that he was having a ruckus with other people not linked to the demonstration and that those are the people he tried to shoot.
A .40-caliber was retrieved from Williams when he was arrested and according to officials, if and when there is truth to his claims that he was having a dispute with someone else, there might be more arrests once the investigation develops and continues.
The two officers shot were standing outside the police station and were part of a protective line that was set up to face the demonstrators. One officer, 41, was shot in the shoulder while the other officer, 32, was shot in the cheek under his right eye.
The protest, unrest, and conflict started back in August when a white police officer shot an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown, 18.