Kenosha shooting: Two shot to death on Day 3 of protest

Protestors run for cover as police shoots teargas to disperse the crowd in Kenosha, Wisconsin on Tuesday night. Pic/AFP

Two people were shot to death and another was wounded during a third night of protests in Kenosha over the police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, and authorities on Wednesday hunted for a possible vigilante seen on cell phone video opening fire in the middle of the street with a rifle.

The gunfire was reported just before midnight, and Sheriff David Beth said one victim was shot in the head and another in the chest, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. The third victim's wounds were not believed to life-threatening. He said investigators had reviewed footage of what happened and that he was confident a man would be arrested soon.

Beth said armed people had been patrolling the city's streets in recent nights, but he did not know if the gunman was among them. "They're a militia. They're like a vigilante group."

Cell phone video of at least two of the shootings that was posted online shows what appears to be a white man with a semi-automatic rifle jogging down the middle of a street as a crowd and some police officers follow him.

A witness, Julio Rosas, 24, said when the gunman stumbled and fell, "two people jumped onto him and there was a struggle for control of his rifle. At that point during the struggle, he just began to fire multiple rounds and that dispersed people near him." "The rifle was being jerked around in all directions while it was being fired."

On Tuesday, police fired tear gas for the third straight night to disperse protesters outside Kenosha's courthouse.

'Blake is paralysed'

Jacob Blake is paralysed, and it would "take a miracle" for him to walk again, his family's attorney said on Tuesday, while calling for the officer who opened fire to be arrested and others involved to lose their jobs. The 29-year-old was in surgery on Tuesday, said attorney Ben Crump, adding that the bullets severed his spinal cord and shattered his vertebrae.

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