The US saw another night of chaos as protests over police brutality raged on, with the president using a televised address to threaten to send in the military to regain order.
The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 sparked angry protests across the country which continued into Monday night.
The National Guard has been deployed in a number of cities, but Donald Trump threatened on Monday to use the force of the military to quell protests.
If governors throughout the country do not deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers to bring the situation under control, Trump said the US military would step in to “quickly solve the problem for them” as he called violent acts carried out during the protests “acts of domestic terror”.
He called on mayors and governors to deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers to “dominate the streets”.
His announcement came as police under federal command forced peaceful demonstrators outside the White House back with tear gas so Trump could walk to a nearby church and pose with a Bible.
One critic, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, called it a photo op.
Violence escalates
Police officers and National Guard soldiers in Kentucky killed a man early on Monday.
Police said they were returning fire after someone in a group shot them first.
Buffalo Police said two people were struck by gunfire during Monday’s protest. Meanwhile, a vehicle ploughed into a line of police officers in the city, injuring at least two.
In Louisville, the chief of police was fired following the killing of an owner of a popular barbeque restaurant, reportedly known for offering meals to police officers.
David McAtee died while police and National Guard soldiers were enforcing a curfew early on Monday amid waves of protests over a previous police shooting in Kentucky’s largest city.
Police said they were responding to gunfire from a crowd.
George Floyd’s autopsy results released
Floyd, a 46-year-old black American, died after a police officer held his knee on his neck for several minutes, ignoring the handcuffed man’s cries of distress.
An autopsy commissioned for Floyd’s family found that he died of asphyxiation due to neck and back compression, the family’s attorneys said.
The new autopsy results found the compression cut off blood to Floyd’s brain, and that the weight on his back made it hard to breathe, attorney Ben Crump said.
One police officer, Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd’s neck in videos widely shared online, has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.
Chauvin and three other officers were fired.