SAN CRISTOBAL, Venezuela — The killing of a 14-year-old boy by a policeman during an antigovernment protest raised already high tensions Wednesday in Venezuela amid a crackdown on the opposition and crippling economic problems.
Schools and many shops stayed closed in San Cristobal, the capital of a restive western state, the day after Kluiverth Roa was shot in the head and killed during a confrontation between protesters and police.
Roa’s father spoke to hundreds of mourners who gathered in the Andean city for the boy’s funeral Wednesday afternoon and said his son had neither supported nor opposed the government, but was an innocent bystander.
Police officer Javier Mora Ortiz confessed to firing on Roa with plastic ammunition, officials said. The family has said the boy’s autopsy suggested it was a live round.
A photo and video of the student lying in a pool of blood, his backpack hanging over his shoulder, as a man frantically tries to stanch the bleeding and others scream and clutch their heads in horror rocketed around social media Tuesday afternoon.
Ruling party officials, including President Nicolas Maduro, forcefully condemned the killing.
But as Maduro spoke Tuesday, offering condolences while also saying the police had been attacked, many residents of this university town near the Colombian border leaned out their windows to bang pots and pans in a cacophonous protest that lasted two hours. Shops closed their doors and public transportation halted as protesters hurling rocks clashed with police backed by armored trucks late into the night.
In the neighboring mountain town of Merida, however, students clashed with police who fired plastic ammunition. At least four protesters were seriously injured,
In Caracas, dozens of protesters held signs outside the diplomatic mission of the Vatican beseeching Pope Francis to intervene.
On Wednesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry described the killing as horrendous and of a piece with the wrongheaded direction in which he said the Venezuelan government is moving.