Police say 18-year-old shot self after officer confrontation

NORMANDY, Mo. -- Authorities investigating the death of an 18-year-old who police say exchanged gunfire with an officer said Thursday the St. Louis-area officer's shots never hit him, even as his father questioned an account by the local police department that his son killed himself.

Amonderez Green of Florissant, Missouri, died early Thursday, 14 hours after a confrontation with a Normandy officer.

Normandy police said Green and an officer exchanged gunfire, but neither was struck. They said Green was suicidal and ran a short distance before shooting himself.

St. Louis County police are investigating at Normandy's request. County police spokesman Brian Schellman stopped short of declaring Green's death a suicide, saying ballistics testing and an autopsy are pending. But he said Green was not struck by any bullets fired by the Normandy officer.

Green's father, Jermell Simpson, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports of suicide are "a total lie."

The confrontation was near Ferguson, Missouri, still on edge 14 months after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, 18, who was black and unarmed.

Green also was black. The Normandy officer, a 12-year veteran of the department, is white.

He is on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.

Simpson said although his son had been upset before the shooting, Simpson and other relatives told a responding officer they "had it covered."

Videos posted to YouTube and other social media sites also questioned the police account of suicide, with some witnesses claiming officers shot Green.

But one of them, Dominique Clemons, when reached by The Associated Press, said she no longer would discuss what she saw because the media had misconstrued her earlier comments.

She declined to say what was misrepresented.