Baltimore awaits prosecutor’s findings on controversial death

Baltimore, still recovering from Monday’s riots, is waiting to hear how a state prosecutor will respond to a criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding the fatal injury to a man in police custody.

Police in the city, located about 40 miles from Washington DC, gave the state's attorney an investigative report into the death of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old African-American man who was arrested on April 12th and died a week later from a spinal injury.

Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby must decide how to proceed against the six officers suspended over Mr Gray's death which ignited a wave of peaceful protests culminating in Monday's violent clashes between demonstrators and police in Baltimore hours following his funeral.

The civil unrest led Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to ask Maryland governor Larry Hogan to declare a state of emergency allowing him to call in the National Guard, the military reserve, and police reinforcements from neighbouring states.

Parts of the city were overrun by residents setting buildings ablaze and looters pillaging shops as police in riot gear attempted to keep order.

Police struggled to deal with rioters throwing rocks and other missiles. Almost 100 officers have been injured since Monday.

Protestors see Gray's death as another incident of police brutality and racial profiling following other police-involved deaths in Ferguson, Missouri; Staten Island, New York; and North Charleston, South Carolina. On Wednesday, protests over Mr Gray's death spread to Washington DC and New York, where more than 140 were arrested.

The events around Gray’s death remain unclear, drawing intense focus on the police report and Mosby’s conclusions, which could be some time away, into what she believes happened on April 12th.

That day Mr Gray was arrested at 8.39am after he made eye contact with a police officer and ran. He was charged with illegally possessing a switchblade knife. A video captured by a bystander in the Sandtown neighbourhood, which is in the northwest of the city, showed Mr Gray being cuffed with his hands behind him and screaming in pain as he was carried to a police van with his legs dragging behind him.

When the van arrived at the police station a short time later, he was found unconscious. Investigators are trying to piece together how and when Mr Gray suffered the spinal injury that led to his death on April 19th following a week in a coma.

Police previously said the van stopped three times: first to put Mr Gray in leg irons as he had become “irate”, a second time to call for another police unit to check on his condition, and for a third to put another prisoner into the van’s other metal compartment.

On Thursday police said the van stopped for a fourth time before the officers asked for another unit to check on him.

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that a document, written by a police investigator, said that the other prisoner in the van could hear Mr Gray "banging against the walls" and that he believed that he "was intentionally trying to injure himself".

"We disagree with any implication that Freddie Gray severed his own spinal cord," said his family's lawyer Jason Downs.