Ferguson: The Day After

Emotions ran high and violence erupted in Ferguson, Missouri following a grand jury's decision not to indict the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown. INSIDE EDITION has the details.

Within minutes of the crowds that gathered in Ferguson to hear the news, fury erupted in an orgy of rioting and looting.

Michael Brown's distraught family had called for calm and peaceful protest, but the grief of the slain teen's stepfather boiled over as seen in a New York Times video.

In the video he screamed, “Burn this [expletive] down! Burn this [expletive] down!”    

The family's attorney Benjamin Crump says it was a momentary lapse. In a press conference he said, "So don't condemn for being human."

On The View Rosie O’Donnell had a bizarre conspiracy theory, saying, “Why do you think they waited to announce it until 9 o’clock at night? I think it was a calculated decision in order to incite people and that in some way in order to take everyone off of what happened to an 18-year-old boy in the street and put it on to 'Look at all these horrible people rioting.'”

A store owner says the timing helped trigger the violence.

He told INSIDE EDITION's Steven Fabian, "Why would we tell the world this information at night?"

Fabian asked, "Do you think they made a mistake doing it at 9 o'clock?"

The store owner replied, "Why wouldn't you do it now. Why wouldn't you have given us the information so that we could have made sure everybody was safe, everybody was at home, and then tell everybody at 9 a.m. in the morning?"

See More Interviews with Ferguson Store Owners

All the top TV networks interrupted programming to broadcast the president's appeal for calm. But even as he spoke, violence could be seen building in the split screen image.

Reporters were in the thick of the rioting.

Chris Cuomo said on CNN, "Tear gas just dropped right here near us. It is going to get very bad here since we don't have masks."

Miguel Almaguer on NBC said, "What we are hearing now is a succession of gunshots. One right after the other and they are getting closer to this direction."

Stephanie Elam on CNN said, "They are throwing stuff at me now. It is that kind of scene out here right now."

The scene inside the convenience store where Michael Brown was suspected of shoplifting before being shot was looted. Looters swarmed inside Monday night and fires were set. Dramatic video was shot by Morehouse College professor Marc Lamont Hill.  

He told INSIDE EDITION, "A lot of the damage you saw, a lot of the violence you saw, it was not coming out of lawlessness or disregard. It was coming out of pain and anger."

Watch the Dramatic Video Shot by Hill

Ferguson still looked like a war zone on Tuesday with smoke rising from burned out buildings that were once stores and restaurants.

Owners spent today cleaning up their stores.

Steven Fabian was in a store in Ferguson. He said, "Right now we are inside Beauty World, one of the stores that was damaged last night. You can see, just this place is a total mess. You can see products all over the floor. Broken glass everywhere. The whole store is filled up with water because the sprinkler systems ran all night long.'

There were protests from coast-to-coast. In New York City somebody hurled fake blood at Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and marchers took over Times Square. There were even angry scenes in Beverly Hills, but nothing compared to the disturbing scenes in Ferguson.