Ferguson protest leader found dead

Ferguson protest leader Darren Seals, 29, was found shot inside a burning car in the village of Riverview, about five miles east of Ferguson, early on Tuesday.

Police have not determined a motive for the crime or identified any witnesses. It declined to say in which part of Seals' body he was shot.

Seals led protests in the city of Ferguson following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in 2014.

Police officers were first called to investigate a burning vehicle in Riverview. "When the fire was extinguished, a deceased male subject was located inside of the vehicle," local police department said in a statement.

Seals, whose last-known address was in St. Louis, was identified as the victim.

Hours before his death, Seals posted on Twitter about Colin Kaepernick, a San Francisco 49ers National Football League quarterback who protested racial injustice and police brutality by declining to stand for the national anthem, and the US presidential election.

In his Twitter profile, Seals described himself as a "businessman, revolutionary, activist, unapologetically BLACK, Afrikan in AmeriKKKa, fighter, leader."

Black rights activists were posting Seals' tweet in which he suggests being threatend by police officers in July.

News of his death caused a firestorm on social media with many people linking the incident with history of racial discrimination in the US.

Although a prominent Black rights activits, Seals criticised the Black Rights Movement for being "white-owned."

Ferguson, a St. Louis suburb, gained national attention because of rioting after the August 2014 shooting of Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, by white police officer Darren Wilson.

Most protests were peaceful, but violence erupted when a grand jury decided not to bring charges against Wilson.

A federal investigation later found patterns of racial discrimination by Ferguson police.