RIOTING broke out in the US city of St Louis on Wednesday night after police shot a young black man dead.

Police in riot gear used tear gas and rubber bullets after nearly 100 angry residents took to the street in the area around Page Boulevard and Walton Avenue in the afternoon. Three people were arrested.Later that evening some set up a “flaming barricade” and torched a vacant building and a car.

The shooting of 18-year-old high-school graduate Mansur Ball-Bey recalled that of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown a year ago in Ferguson, a suburb of the eastern Missouri city.

Police said that the teen was one of two armed suspects who ran out of the back door of a local house just as police were preparing to raid it.

They claimed that two officers fired in self-defence after the teen pointed a gun at them after being ordered to drop his weapon.

But police could not produce the gun, claiming that it had been stolen. Four firearms and quantities of crack cocaine were recovered from the scene. The other suspect escaped and remains at large.

The shooting came on the first anniversary commemorations of the fatal St Louis police shooting of Kajieme Powell, who brandished a knife at officers.

The spate of police killings of black people was a factor prompting the Washington-based Cato Institute to reduce the US human rights ranking from 17th to 20th in its recently published report.