Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Baltimore on Tuesday to protest the death of a 27-year-old black man who died after being arrested by local police.
The U.S. Justice Department is looking into the case of Freddie Gray, who was arrested on April 12 and a week later in a hospital after slipping into a coma, a spokeswoman said.
A preliminary autopsy showed Gray died from a spinal injury.
Baltimore police have identified six officers who have been suspended over the death, which sparked outrage in the largely black city and renewed concern about law enforcement treatment of minorities in the United States.
The crowd of protesters gathered on Tuesday evening outside the city’s Western District police headquarters and marched to the spot a few blocks away where Gray was arrested, according to aerial footage on local television.
The protest was peaceful and was winding down at about 9 p.m., CNN reported.
Officers arrested Gray because he fled when they approached him on a street, an incident captured by bystanders’ video recordings.
They found a switchblade knife in his pocket and put him in a police van for transport to a station. When Gray was taken from the van, he was unresponsive and transported to a hospital.
Demanding “Justice for Freddie,” the protesters were calling for the six officers to be charged with first-degree murder, according to CNN.
They could be seen raising their hands in the air, in what has become a protest sign since the August 2014 death of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
Some witnesses said Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black man, had put his hands in the air and said “Don’t shoot” before he was killed. The U.S. Justice Department in a report later said it could not confirm those accounts and said they were not credible.
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