Police have charged a young African-American man over a shooting in Ferguson that wounded two officers and rekindled tension in the racially-troubled Missouri city.
After an intense four-day manhunt, 20-year-old Jeffrey Williams has been charged with first-degree assault, armed criminal action and shooting a firearm from a car causing injury, following last week's incident.
"Essentially what we have charged him with is firing shots. It's possible at this point that he was firing shots at someone other than the police, but struck the police officers," said St Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch.
McCulloch says Williams has admitted to the shooting but the investigation is ongoing.
Ferguson has been in the international spotlight since a white police officer fatally shot unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in August, igniting sometimes violent protests in major American cities and prompting an impassioned debate about policing and race relations.
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The gunfire on Wednesday night last week erupted just hours after Ferguson's police chief resigned in response to a Justice Department report of alleged systemic racial bias in the city's overwhelmingly white police force, in a suburb of 21,000 that is two-thirds black.
McCulloch said Williams had participated in some of the nightly demonstrations that have taken place outside Ferguson's police station and municipal court house since Brown's killing.
US Attorney General Eric Holder branded Wednesday's shooting, in which one of the officers was hit in the face, a "heinous and cowardly crime".
"This arrest sends a clear message that acts of violence against our law enforcement personnel will never be tolerated," Holder said.
