Brandon Webber who was an honor student at Central High School in Memphis and was enrolled at the University of Memphis was shot fatally on Wednesday by U.S. Marshals during an altercation outside his family’s home in North Memphis, causing a protest to erupt after.
According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, officers from the U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force encountered Brandon because he was wanted for multiple arrest warrants outside a home on Durham Avenue.
While trying to take him into custody authorities claimed Brandon was getting into a vehicle, and allegedly “rammed his vehicle into the officers’ vehicles multiple times before exiting with a weapon,” the TBI said. Marshals then shot and killed the man.
Shortly after the shooting, a crowd formed on Overton Crossing Street and Argonne Street shortly after the shooting and they soon grew restless. Memphis Police Department officers formed a barricade and soon brought out shields and batons, creating a standoff between the two sides.
Helicopters circled overhead. Crowd members yelled and threw rocks and bricks at patrol cars passing through, and gunshots were heard.
Not much details were released immediately after the shooting but his father,Sonny Webber, and Shelby County Commissioner, Tami Sawyer, said Webber was shot “16-20 times.”
Although authorities have not confirmed how many times Webber was shot.
Tami Sawyer took to her Twitter and said, “Don’t judge Frayser without asking a community how it feels to mourn their youth over and over again. What do people do with their pain and trauma when it gets to be too much when a city has ignored them when their loss is too great and they can no longer yell at the sky?”
According to the Washington Post, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said in a statement that they would not name the officers involved in the shooting. The Memphis Police Department also mentioned none of their officers were involved in the shooting.
In a Facebook post, Mayor Jim Strickland mentioned how proud he was of the first responders and said, “I’m impressed by their professionalism and incredible restraint as they endured concrete rocks being thrown at them and people spitting at them.”
