The father of a slain black teenager pleaded for peace Saturday after the acquittal of a white police officer triggered an apparent retaliatory shooting at the defense attorney's office and touched off protests in the streets of Pittsburgh, reports the AP. The verdict late Friday in the deadly shooting of 17-year-old Antwon Rose II angered his family and civic leaders and prompted hundreds to gather Saturday afternoon in the Hill District neighborhood, the historic center of black cultural life in Pittsburgh. One man held a sign with the names of black men killed by police around the US. "It's very painful to see what happened, to sit there and deal with it," Antwon's father, Antwon Rose Sr., told the crowd. "I just don't want it to happen to our city no more." Afterward, he said: "I want peace, period, all the way around. ... Just because there was violence doesn't mean that we counter that with violence."
Early Saturday, five to eight shots were fired into the building where the officer's attorney, Patrick Thomassey, works, police in Monroeville said. No one was hurt. Police said they had been staking the office out as a precaution, and gunfire erupted after they left to answer another call around midnight. Former East Pittsburgh police Officer Michael Rosfeld had been charged with homicide for shooting Antwon as the unarmed teen ran away from a traffic stop in June. Antwon's family is now pressing ahead with a federal civil rights lawsuit filed against Rosfeld and East Pittsburgh. His mother's attorney called the shots at the lawyer's office "an act of cowardice and barbarism that does nothing but perpetuate the stereotypes often used to justify police brutality." Thomassey said after the verdict he hopes the city remains calm and "everybody takes a deep breath and gets on with their lives."
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