Emergency declared in North Carolina town

SECURITY MEASURES: Police officers in riot gear approach demonstrators in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina. (AFP)

CHARLOTTE: Charlotte, North Carolina awoke under a state of emergency Thursday after one person was seriously wounded in a second night of violent protests over the police shooting of a black man.
Mayor Jennifer Roberts said a curfew was under consideration after the state’s governor activated the National Guard and state police to help keep the peace in the restive southern city.
“We are certainly going to talk about that today,” she said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” show. “We did sign a statement last night to declare a state of emergency, which gives us that authority.”
Several hundred people taunted riot police late Wednesday amid clashes in the city center.
A protester was critically wounded and on life support, the city said, after erroneously reporting that the person had died. Authorities had said the protester was shot by a civilian, adding that police did not open fire.
An AFP reporter at the scene of the protests outside the Omni Charlotte hotel saw a man who was apparently shot falling to the ground, bleeding heavily.
“We cannot tolerate violence. We cannot tolerate the destruction of property and will not tolerate the attacks toward our police officers that are occurring right now,” Gov. Pat McCrory told CNN after announcing on Twitter that he was activating the National Guard and the state highway police to reinforce Charlotte’s police force.
Roberts said she was “working to calm things down.”
“We have great folks in our community who really want this to be peaceful and want us to have constructive dialogue to move our city forward,” she said.
The protests were sparked by the death of Keith Lamont Scott, 43, who was shot in an apartment complex parking lot on Tuesday during an encounter with officers searching for a suspect wanted for arrest.
The evening started out with a peaceful vigil for Scott, but the atmosphere changed dramatically once demonstrators walked to the nearby police headquarters, where a protester pulled the American flag to the bottom of its flagpole.
By the time the protesters walked the few blocks to uptown, and encountered riot police standing like statues on Trade Street, the marchers were seething.
“It’s too much. It’s too much,” winced one woman, wiping tears from her eyes as she stood before riot police.
“We’ve got brothers and sisters and children and fathers who think we’re not going to live to see the next day. Nobody should have to live like that,” she said. Some demonstrators stood on cars and hurled objects at police, who fired what appeared to be tear gas, sending the protesters scattering.
Scott’s death is the latest in a string of police-involved killings of black men that have fueled outrage across the United States.
Ahead of Wednesday’s protest, presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton weighed in on the violence in Charlotte, which came on the heels of another fatal police shooting of a black man, Terence Crutcher, on Friday in Tulsa.