Protests erupted Sunday night after police shot dead an African-American youth in a Minneapolis neighborhood, where a policeman is currently on trial for the murder of another Black man, George Floyd.

Hundreds of people gathered outside a police station in the Brooklyn Center, northwest of Minneapolis. The police fired tear gas and sound bombs at the protesters, according to a cameraman from the France Press video service at the scene.

The mother of the 20-year-old black man named Daunte Wright, 20, told a crowd Sunday night that he had called her to inform her that he had been arrested by the police.

Katie Wright reported that she heard security forces asking her son to leave his cell phone before someone hung up. A short time later, his girlfriend informed her that he had been shot.

The Minnesota Criminal Arrest Office confirmed to France Press that it was "investigating a police-related shooting incident" at the Brooklyn Center, but refused to identify the victim.

According to a statement by the Brooklyn Center Police Department, the officers asked the driver to stop due to a traffic violation. When they discovered that there was an arrest warrant for him, they tried to arrest him.

But he returned to his car and one of the officers opened fire, killing the driver immediately.

The statement said that a female passenger who was with him in the car suffered "injuries that do not pose a threat to her life" and was taken to a hospital on the site, without her identity being identified.

Hundreds gathered at the Brooklyn Center on Sunday night, where police confronted them with riot gear.

Pictures from the site showed men walking on the front of a police car. Police fired non-fatal shots in an attempt to disperse the protesters, according to the Star Tribune newspaper.

After about an hour, the police backed out, the crowd lit candles and wrote messages like "Justice for Daunte Wright" with chalk on the street.

Brooklyn Mayor Mike Elliott described the shooting as "tragic."

"We ask the protesters to maintain pacifism. Peaceful protests are not dealt with by force," he said on Twitter.

The shooting comes as the trial of former policeman Derek Chauvin, accused of murdering African-American George Floyd, continues in Minneapolis.

Floyd's killing sparked months of protests in the United States against racism and police violence and sparked international outrage.