According to reports, police officials said that the man was shot in Ferguson by a St Louis County officer after pointing a handgun at him soon after 1am on Wednesday, following fresh demonstrations over the death on Saturday of Michael Brown.
A woman was separately being treated in hospital after being shot in the head during a drive-by shooting in the city. The incidents followed the peaceful end earlier to a tense standoff between protesters and police, prompting hopes of avoiding a third night of violence.
A raucous convoy of about 250 young demonstrators, marching along a main route into downtown Ferguson, was halted about 30 yards from a wall of police assembled at the entrance to the street where Brown was killed by a still-unidentified officer on Saturday.
Officers in military-style uniforms, some carrying high-powered rifles and wearing balaclavas, formed a line at least two men deep and blocking the entire width of Florrisant Street, the main drag where angry protests over Brown's killing had flared for the previous two nights.
Pitched behind two large armoured trucks, they repeatedly warned the demonstrators through a Tannoy system to "get out of the road or face arrest" – the same warning delivered on Monday night before officers fired teargas, rubber bullets and wooden baton rounds into the crowds.
But for 40 minutes, the protesters defied the threat. Some hung out of car windows, while others raised their arms aloft and repeated what has become their defining slogan: "Hands up, don't shoot." A police helicopter swooped around the dark sky above, shining a bright spotlight on the faces of the almost entirely African American crowd.
As the police declined to follow through with arrests, furious members of the crowd screamed obscenities at officers and urged them to "shoot those rubber bullets".
In the early hours of Wednesday it was reported that a small skirmish had resulted in police again using teargas and a young woman being struck in the head with a projectile. Spookwrites, an Instagram user who had previously been covering the protests, posted a photograph of herself wearing a neck brace and showing cuts on her face.
Ferguson police refused on Tuesday to release the name of the officer who shot Brown in sharply disputed circumstances. While police say that Brown assaulted the officer during a struggle, witnesses said he was shot while trying to run away after being grabbed by the officer when he and a friend would not leave the road and walk on the pavement.
The Ferguson city police officer who shot Brown has not been named publicly, but has been placed on paid leave while the shooting is investigated by the separate St Louis county police department. The FBI is also looking into whether the incident caused civil rights violations.
The official response to Brown's death has been rejected as insultingly inadequate by many African American residents of Ferguson, a city of about 21,000 people where 67% of the population is black, yet 94% of the police force – and prominent figures in local government, such as the mayor – are white monstrations over police shooting of Michael Brown, 18
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