Highway shutdown averted at Ferguson protests over teen’s shooting

A planned highway shutdown fell through Wednesday as a wall of officers in riot gear kept Ferguson police shooting protesters from walking onto Interstate 70 in a nearby St. Louis suburb during the late afternoon commute. State troopers and St. Louis city and county officers warned the roughly 150 demonstrators who gathered to stay out of the road. The demonstration was planned as an effort to get Missouri Governor Jay Nixon to appoint a special prosecutor in the case against Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who shot dead unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown last month. There were reports of between 35 and 70 arrests.

They’re [police] absolutely too aggressive.

Curtis Sadler, 65, a Ferguson, Mo., resident and bus driver who was at the protest

Protests over Brown’s death have been largely centered in Ferguson, and the traffic shutdown was one of the first demonstrations that tried to disrupt the larger St. Louis region. Officials with the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the St. Louis County Police and the St. Louis Metropolitan Police, as well as those with emergency-services agencies, said the protesters were creating a hazard for themselves and others, and were threatening to delay the response times of ambulances and fire trucks.

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