Heavily armed protesters march through Louisville demanding justice for Breonna Taylor
Demonstrations against racial injustice continued across the US on Saturday with protests in Kentucky, Colorado and Texas where one person was shot and killed.
A group of heavily armed black protesters marched through Louisville, Kentucky demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, a black woman killed in March by police officers who burst into her apartment.
Scores of the demonstrators, carrying semi-automatic rifles and shotguns and clad in black paramilitary gear, walked in formation to a fenced off intersection where they were separated by police from a smaller group of armed counter-protesters.
The black militia dubbed NFAC want justice for Ms Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician who died in a hail of gunfire when drug investigators bearing a "no-knock" warrant entered her Louisville home four months ago.
One police officer involved in the raid was fired by the city's police department in June. Two other officers have been placed on administrative reassignment. No criminal charges have been filed against any of the three.
The leader of the NFAC group, John "Grandmaster Jay" Johnson, called on officials to speed up the investigation into her death and to be more transparent.
"If you don't tell us nothing we going to think you ain't doing nothing," Mr Johnson said in a speech, according to the Louisville Courier Journal.
Three members of the group were hospitalised with non-life-threatening injuries when a weapon was accidentally discharged, police said.
Ms Taylor's death, which returned to prominence following the May 25 suffocation in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, has become a rallying cry in nationwide protests against police brutality and racial bias in the US criminal justice system.
In downtown Austin, Texas one person was killed when several shots were fired amid a Black Lives Protest on Saturday, authorities said.
Footage posted during a Facebook Live showed the moment when several shots rang out as a group of about 100 people marched and chanted "fists up! Fight back!"
In the Denver suburb of Aurora on Saturday a car drove through a crowd and a protester was shot in the during a demonstration.
The Aurora Police Department said on Twitter that protesters were walking on Interstate 225 Saturday when a vehicle drove through.
Police said a protester fired a weapon, striking at least one person who was taken to a hospital in stable condition.
Authorities said the vehicle was towed and they are investigating. Protesters also broke windows to the courthouse and a fire was started in an office, police said. An unlawful assembly was declared and police ordered protesters to leave the area, authorities said.
