FERGUSON, Mo. – The scattered clashes and violence had flared on the first morning of a curfew in this troubled city. But as Sunday drew on, pastors, the police and civil-rights figures joined parishioners in churches, all trying to tamp down the anger that has followed the fatal shooting of an 18-year-old unarmed black man. Results of a preliminary private autopsy reveal the teenager, Michael Brown, was shot six times.
In a packed sanctuary at Greater Grace Church, not far from the site of evening demonstrations, Capt. Ronald S. Johnson, the Missouri State Highway Patrol captain brought in by the governor to take over security, spoke with the cadence of a preacher as he apologized to Brown’s family.
“My heart goes out to you, and I say that I’m sorry,” Johnson said. “I wear this uniform, and I should stand up here and say that I’m sorry.”
The shooting of the teenager Aug. 9 by a white officer, Darren Wilson, is the subject of concurrent inquiries by the FBI and the St. Louis County police.
Several demonstrators held signs reading “Stop racist police killing.” Early Sunday morning, just after a midnight curfew went into effect, police officers dressed in riot gear and driving heavily armored vehicles engaged in a new clash with angry demonstrators. One person threw a bottle rocket that lit the street ablaze and left a lingering scent of gasoline.
As night fell in Ferguson on Sunday, another peaceful protest quickly deteriorated after marchers pushed toward one end of a street. Police pushed them back by repeatedly firing tear gas, and the streets were clear by the time the curfew took effect at midnight.
Officials extended the curfew, which runs from midnight until 5 a.m., for another night and said they would decide each day whether to continue its enforcement.
In churches here, the calls for calm continued.
At the Greater St. Mark Family Church in Ferguson, the state attorney general, Chris Koster, said he came to pray and grieve with the mostly African-American parishioners.
“You have lost a member of your community at the hands of a member of my community,” he said. “Not just the Caucasian community, but the law-enforcement community. And that is painful to every good-hearted person in this city.”
Time and again, Koster won applause. But in a vivid display of the challenges faced by the authorities in this tumultuous city of 21,000 that has become the center of a national debate about race and policing, a large crowd outside the church continued to protest the circumstances.
Also on Sunday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder ordered a federal medical examiner to perform another autopsy on Brown.
The “extraordinary circumstances” surrounding the death of Brown and a request by Brown’s family members prompted the order, Department of Justice spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement.
A federally conducted autopsy “more closely focused on entry point of projectiles, defensive wounds and bruises” might help that investigation, said David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor who supervised the criminal civil rights section of Miami’s U.S. attorney’s office. The move is “not that unusual,” he added.
The preliminary private autopsy by Dr. Michael Baden, a former New York City chief medical examiner, found that Brown had been shot at least six times, including twice in the head. One of the bullets entered the top of Brown’s skull, suggesting that his head was bent forward when he suffered a fatal injury.
Baden said it was likely the last of bullets to hit Brown.
Police have said little about the encounter between Brown and the officer, except to say that it involved a scuffle in which the officer was injured and Brown was shot. Witnesses say the teenager had his hands in the air as the officer fired multiple rounds.
Baden told The New York Times that Brown also was shot four times in the right arm and that all the bullets were fired into his front. The the bullets did not appear to have come from very close range because there was no gunpowder on his body.
That determination could change if there were residue on Brown’s clothing, which Baden did not examine.
Some of the bullets entered and exited Brown several times, including one that caused at least five wounds. It said one shattered his right eye, went through his face, left through his jaw and re-entered his collarbone. The last two shots in the head would have stopped him in his tracks and were likely the last fired.
Baden told the Times that Brown would not have survived even if he had been taken to a hospital immediately.
Baden did not return a message left by The Associated Press earlier Sunday.
Capt. Johnson said protesters were not the reason for the police reaction early Sunday. He cited a report of people who had broken into a barbecue restaurant and taken to the roof, and a man who flashed a handgun in the street as armored vehicles approached the protesters.
At a Sunday rally, Johnson said he had met members of Brown’s family, and the experience “brought tears to my eyes and shame to my heart.”
“When this is over,” he told the crowd, “I’m going to go in my son’s room. My black son, who wears his pants sagging, who wears his hat cocked to the side, got tattoos on his arms, but that’s my baby.”
The Rev. Al Sharpton told the rally Brown’s death was a “defining moment for this country.”
Sharpton said he wants Congress to stop programs that provide military-style weaponry to police departments. He said he expects police to “smear” the slain teenager, his family and his attorneys. He also condemned the recent violence and looting in Ferguson.
The protests have been going on since Brown’s death heightened racial tensions between the predominantly black community and the mostly white Ferguson Police Department, leading to several run-ins between police and protesters and prompting Missouri’s governor to put the state highway patrol in charge of security.
Ferguson police waited six days to publicly reveal the name of the officer and documents alleging Brown robbed a convenience store shortly before he was killed. Police Chief Thomas Jackson said the officer did not know Brown was a robbery suspect when he encountered him walking in the street with a friend.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
