(Reuters) – An investigation into the shooting of a 27-year-old man in Lancaster, Pennsylvania is ongoing after news of the incident sparked protests in the small city on Sunday night, a spokesman for the local district attorney’s office said.
The Lancaster City Bureau of Police said that one of their officers shot the man – identified by the district attorney’s office as Ricardo Munoz – late on Sunday afternoon after responding to a report of a domestic disturbance.
The city’s police department, which released body camera footage of the incident, said the man chased after the officer brandishing a knife in his right hand.
“The officer fired several shots from his firearm, striking the subject,” the police department said in a statement, adding that the man did not survive the shooting and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Details of the man’s background have not been disclosed by the police.
More than a hundred protesters gathered outside the city’s police station after the shooting, the police department said, making Lancaster the latest flashpoint in a summer of U.S. civil unrest over racism and police shootings.
During the protests, bricks were thrown through the front of the police station and into the post office window, the police department said in a statement, adding that chemical agents were used to disperse the crowd.
Brett Hambright, a spokesman for the Lancaster County District Attorney’s office, said an investigation into the incident was ongoing and declined to provide further details.
“A police-involved shooting has significant impact on a community, as we are seeing with the large number of individuals gathering in the streets,” District Attorney Heather Adams said in a statement late on Sunday. “We will do our best to release details about the incident in a timely manner.”
(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
