ST. LOUIS _ Edward Crawford, the man featured in a Ferguson protest photograph throwing a tear gas canister back toward police, was found dead late Thursday night, his father said. Police say it appears the death was from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Crawford's father, Edward Sr., confirmed his son's death to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He said his son's mother called him and they went together to the morgue early Friday to identify their son's body. Crawford Sr. was in tears Friday as he spoke with a reporter.
The medical examiner's office says the death of Edward S. Crawford Jr. was reported as a suicide at 11:46 p.m. Thursday. However, the official cause of death is pending the results of an autopsy. The shooting was in the 1400 block of Salisbury Street, in the city's Hyde Park neighborhood.
Crawford lived in University City.
According to a police summary, Crawford was in the back seat of a car. Two women were in the car with him. The car was heading east on Salisbury, approaching Blair Avenue near Hyde Park, when the gun went off.
The women told police that Crawford had started talking about how distraught he was over "personal matters." They heard him rummaging for something in the backseat, and the next thing they knew he shot himself in the head.
Crawford's father, 52, said he believes it was an accidental shooting, not intentional. "I don't believe it was a suicide," he said. He said investigators weren't saying much to him yet. "They're being hush-hush," the father said.
The case is being handled by district detectives, not homicide investigators.
Edward Crawford Sr. said he last saw his son two days ago; he was in good spirits, certainly not suicidal.
"He was wonderful, great, always in a good mood," the father said. "He just got a new apartment and was training for a new job."
He said his son was training for a job at a Schnucks warehouse.
The younger Crawford, 27, was the father of four children. "He loved them to death," Crawford Sr. said.
In 2014, during the Aug. 12-13 protests over the shooting death of unarmed black teen Michael Brown by a white Ferguson police officer, Crawford grabbed a smoking tear gas cylinder, fired by police at the protesters, and threw it back. In a photograph taken by St. Louis Post-Dispatch photographer Robert Cohen, Crawford became an iconic image of the unrest. Crawford found instant fame after coming forward as the man in the photograph.
The photograph was part of the Post-Dispatch's coverage that won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography in 2015.
For many, the act summed up the anger directed at police after Brown's killing. It represented defiance against police aggression. He told the Post-Dispatch that throwing the canister wasn't an act of rebellion, but an instinct.
"I didn't throw a burning can back at police," Crawford told the newspaper in August 2015, after the county counselor's office cited Crawford under two county ordinances for interfering with a police officer and assault. "I threw it out of the way of children."
The case is pending. A court date is set for later this month, County Counselor Peter Krane said.
After learning of his death Friday morning, Missouri Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City, reflected on social media about what he had meant.
"He is #Ferguson's hero," the senator wrote on her Twitter account. "For those of us tear-gassed, he was our local champion."
Chappelle-Nadal said she never met Crawford. But he became a symbol. "For him to throw it back, it was a rebellion ... to say this is not right. We are gonna stand here and not be invisible."
She said some people, locally and nationally, are living in desperate times with a feeling of hopelessness. She said the death is equally sad regardless of whether it was a suicide or accident.
