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Hundreds of protesters in Chicago shut down Michigan Avenue on Friday as part of a march along the city’s “Magnificent Mile.”
The demonstrators took to the streets to bring attention to the 2014 police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, whose death occurred under dramatically different circumstances than those described in official police accounts, video released last week shows. Jason Van Dyke, the officer involved in the shooting, has been charged with first-degree murder.
Police accounts of the shooting said the teenager was acting strangely and lunged at officers with a knife. While McDonald did have a small knife on him, the video shows he was walking away from officers when Van Dyke opened fire, emptying his entire ammunition clip into the teenager and then attempting to reload.
Video of the protest Friday captured demonstrators yelling “16 shots,” a reference to the number of times Van Dyke shot McDonald, and “Stop the cover-up.”
