Ferguson Police: Public info led to arrest of man in shootings of two officers

A 20-year-old man from the St. Louis area has been arrested in connection with the shooting of two police officers during last week’s protests in Ferguson, Missouri, a prosecutor said Sunday.

Williams has been charged with two counts of first-degree assault, a count of firing a weapon from a vehicle and three counts of armed criminal activity, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch said.

He described Williams as a frequent protester in the city – which some took issue with.

At the time of his arrest, Williams was on probation for receiving stolen property.

The prosecutor repeatedly thanked the public for the information that led to the arrest. He also said that, because of the public’s assistance in the case, police were able to serve a search warrant on Williams’ residence where they seized a .40-caliber handgun, “which has been tied to the shell casings that were recovered” at the scene of the shooting.

Williams is being held on a cash-only $300,000 bond, McCulloch said, adding that it’s possible Williams could face more charges and that others could be charged in the case.

Big question: Intent

One element of the case that authorities have yet to sort out is intent, McCulloch said, adding that Williams has acknowledged firing the shots but has said he wasn’t aiming at the police officers.

Investigators are not sure they “buy” Williams’ claim that he opened fire after a dispute with other individuals, McCulloch said, but he didn’t rule it out.

“It’s possible he was firing at someone else,” he said, urging any other witnesses with information to come forward.

Bishop Derrick Robinson, an area organizer, challenged the idea that Williams was a well-known protester.

“I asked him (Williams) why would he say that he was a protester because it makes us look bad – because so many things that we’ve done to rebuild our community. It sets us like five steps back to say that it was a protester who did it, but he admitted to me that he’d never protested,” said Robinson, who spoke to Williams on Sunday.

‘We could have buried two officers’

The shooting of two officers occurred during a Wednesday night protest in Ferguson, but authorities don’t know if the suspect or suspects had any connection to the demonstrations, Belmar said.

Officers saw “muzzle flashes … about 125 yards away,” Belmar said.

“We could have buried two police officers,” Belmar told reporters last week. “I feel very confident that whoever did this … came there for whatever nefarious reason that it was.”

Meanwhile, public donations are “pouring” into police to be used toward a reward to find the gunman and any accomplices, Belmar said.

Authorities are now offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of person or persons responsible for the gunfire upon the two officers, according to the St. Louis Regional CrimeStoppers website.

Police are studying whether to raise that reward with the donations, the chief said.

Protesters said they had nothing to do with the shooting, and that the shots came from a grassy hill away from the crowd.

“In no way are they representative of the thousands of people … who have been protesting,” said Antonio French, a St. Louis alderman.

Belmar believes someone targeted the police, who have faced heated criticism for months, for a reason. “These police officers were standing there, and they were shot just because they were police officers,” he said.

“These police officers were standing there, and they were shot just because they were police officers,” he said.

That department has been under fire since one of its officers, Darren Wilson, shot and killed African-American teen Michael Brown in August, and more recently since a scathing U.S. Department of Justice report documented a pattern of racial discrimination. Police Chief Thomas Jackson resigned Wednesday.

“We are actively addressing the issues that have raised concerns of fairness and fair treatment. We support peaceful protesting. However, we will not allow, nor tolerate, the destructive and violent actions of a few to disrupt our unifying efforts,” the mayor of Ferguson and the City Council said in a statement Sunday.

While the demonstrators’ focus was Ferguson, neither of the wounded officers works for that police department.

The other was hit in the shoulder and the bullet came out the middle of his back, Belmar said. He is a 41-year-old officer with the St. Louis County Police who has been in law enforcement for 14 years.

Both men were treated and released.

CNN’s Michael Martinez, Ed Payne, Carma Hassan, Sara Sidner, Greg Botelho, Catherine E. Shoichet, Holly Yan, Joe Sutton, Sara Sidner, Jason Carroll, Shimon Prokupecz, Evan Perez, Don Lemon, Tina Burnside and Alina Machado contributed to this report.