Ferguson protests, Chief Jon Belmar of the St. Louis County Police Department said. Chief Belmar said that there had been two more shootings in the area, and that the police had used smoke canisters.
The injured man, who was not publicly identified, was part of one of the rival groups, the chief said, and four plainclothes officers saw him running across a parking lot on the opposite side of the avenue.
The officers drove their unmarked sport utility vehicle, with its interior lights flashing, toward him, and he opened fire on the car, Chief Belmar said. The police returned fire from inside the car and then chased the man on foot, he said. Dozens of gunshots were fired, and all four officers shot back and hit the man, who fell to the ground, he said.
A gun that the police recovered from the shooting victim was a 9-milimeter Sig Sauer that they said was reported stolen last year, the authorities said. Chief Belmar said that the four detectives who had shot the man had between six and 12 years of experience, but he declined to provide information about their race. The shooting, which followed an otherwise peaceful day, was another vexing turn for activists and the authorities alike. It was the second consecutive night of gunfire on West Florissant Avenue.
“They were criminals; they weren’t protesters,” Chief Belmar said of the groups exchanging gunfire. “Protesters are the people out there talking about a way to effect change. We can’t afford to have this kind of violence, not only on a night like this but any point in time if we’re going to move forward in the right direction.”
The flash of violence signaled a cruel end to a day that in many ways had seemed festive and hopeful, with activists from across the country descending on Ferguson to push for changes in the police treatment of blacks. Under the humid daylight, people spoke with renewed vigor of the movement that was started after Mr. Brown, 18, was shot and killed here by Darren Wilson, a white police officer.
After hundreds gathered around the spot where Mr. Brown was killed to speak of remembrance and defiance, the dead 18-year-old’s father led a march to a nearby church for a service.
As night came, a large crowd gathered on West Florissant Avenue. The crowds appeared to dwindle after heavy thunderstorms swept through the area.
But even under the wet sky, problems started. A group broke into a beauty supply store, the police said, and stole a cash register. The police quickly responded, however, and the men dropped the machine and ran.
The authorities sent a group of officers to stand in front of the stores that had been burglarized. The police tried to secure another strip of stores across the street, but their cars were pelted with objects, Chief Belmar said, so they pulled out.
As the skies cleared, the protest became more intense.
Protesters blocked the road, and the police donned riot gear and used a megaphone to order them to move.
“This is the Ferguson Police Department,” Sgt. Harry Dilworth, one of the department’s few black officers, said into a megaphone. “You must leave the roadway immediately and remain on the sidewalk or be subject to arrest.”
After the demonstrators had largely cleared out of the street, a caravan of police cars with their sirens blasting came racing down West Florissant Avenue, and dozens of officers in riot gear formed a skirmish line. That drew the protesters back into the street, running toward the line.
Amy Hunter, the director of racial justice for the YWCA, stood to the side and shook her head. She said she believed that the decision by the police to race down the street and form a skirmish line only provoked the protesters into a staredown in the middle of the road.
“We learned the last time we did it this way, there was more violence,” she said.
As the protesters chanted in the street and the police held their position, the situation started to get out of control in a strip mall about 300 yards down the street, where dozens of young people appeared to be hanging out but not protesting.
People broke through the storefront of a hair salon and began to rob it, said Antonio French, an alderman in St. Louis. A reporter for The St. Louis Post-Dispatch stumbled away with a bloody face and said he had been assaulted and robbed after he posted on Twitter that people were breaking into the stores.
Gunshots rang out soon after from the direction of the strip mall around 11:15 p.m. People scattered and crouched behind cars. Officers drew their weapons.
“Officer-involved shooting,” crackled over police radios.
Chief Belmar began directing his officers toward an abandoned building that used to be a Ponderosa restaurant.
Behind the building, Tony Rice, an activist, said he saw a bloodied, handcuffed young black man splayed on the ground with an officer standing over him. In a video that Mr. Rice posted to Twitter, he can be heard frantically saying to the officer: “Hey, he bleeding. Get him some help, man. Please get him some help. He’s bleeding out, man. You see it. He’s breathing, man. Please get him some help.”
Officers eventually did so, Mr. Rice said, and the young man appeared to be alive when he was placed into an ambulance.
As the bullets flew, Mr. French said he ducked behind a sport utility vehicle. He saw a young woman running and told her to come take cover, but, he said, she screamed: “No! No! Where’s my brother?”
“It’s sad and disappointing,” Mr. French said of the evening’s turn of events. “You have some people here who use the cover of this anniversary to commit some violent acts. To see violence happen on this day in this city is really disappointing.”
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