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ST. LOUIS • Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce announced Thursday that she will not file charges against two city police officers who fatally shot a man they said flourished a gun at them during a raid.

Her report says there is not sufficient evidence to support a charge, but does not take a position on whether they were justified to shoot.

Police said Mansur Ball-Bey, 18, ran out the back door of a home in the 1200 block of Walton Avenue that was being searched for guns and drugs about noon Aug. 19.

Authorities say he pointed a handgun with an extended ammunition magazine at police, who opened fire. Officials said Ball-Bey did not shoot.

Joyce’s announcement was made two weeks after in the killing of a man in 2011.

In the Ball-Bey case, Joyce said that with the evidence and witness accounts, she would not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officers did not kill in self-defense.

“One of the biggest challenges we face in this case is that there is no independent, credible witness we can put in front of a grand jury or regular jury who contradicts police statements,� Joyce said in a statement. “None of the other witnesses had a clear view at the moment when Ball-Bey was shot.�

She said her decision was based on her own office’s inquiry, as well as a report delivered to her office in April by the police Force Investigative Unit.

Joyce called the shooting “a tragedy� and said, “I’m sorry for the pain that the Ball-Bey family is experiencing right now.�

Ball-Bey was black. The officers who fired are white and were identified Thursday by the police department as Ronald Vaughan, 29, and Kyle Chandler, 33, who fired the fatal shot. Both graduated from the police academy in 2008.

The two officers were interviewed only by police and refused through their attorney to talk to prosecutors. Their attorney, Brian Millikan, said Thursday, “We’re relieved the inquiry is over … . This shooting, I’ll agree with Jennifer Joyce, is a tragedy but was absolutely justified.�

Todd El, leader of the Moorish Science Temple, spoke on behalf of the Ball-Bey family in an impromptu news conference on the steps of the courthouse Thursday.

He called for Joyce — along with Police Chief Sam Dotson and the city medical examiner, Dr. Michael Graham — to step down.

“There was enough evidence to bring charges against these officers,� El said.

Two versions of a shooting

Ball-Bey was shot on the first anniversary of the controversial police in St. Louis and a little more than a year after a Ferguson officer .

Joyce said two versions of the Ball-Bey shooting emerged from accounts by five key witnesses.

The first account came from an unidentified friend of Ball-Bey who was with him as at least 15 police officers and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tried to serve a search warrant at the apartment on Walton Avenue.

The friend, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, told authorities he did not witness the shooting and gave conflicting statements about where he and Ball-Bey were before the incident, Joyce said. In one interview, the friend said he and Ball-Bey were in an alley at the time; in another, he said they were in a gangway between two apartment buildings on the block. Ball-Bey’s friend told police neither he nor Ball-Bey had been armed.

The second account came from the two officers who shot at Ball-Bey, an off-duty police officer who was in a yard across the alley, and a member of the ATF.

An ATF agent and the off-duty officer said they saw Ball-Bey and his friend run from the back door of the apartment.

“He’s got a gun, he’s got a gun!� The off-duty officer said he yelled to the officers who were chasing Ball-Bey. The off-duty officer also said he had heard one of the officers say, “Police, stop!�

Police said they saw Ball-Bey holding a gun. Joyce said Ball-Bey’s palm print was found on the magazine of a loaded gun witnesses said he tossed near an alley trash bin behind the apartment.

The two officers who shot at Ball-Bey told police they had no choice but to shoot when they saw Ball-Bey turn and point the gun toward one of them. One officer took cover behind a telephone pole at one end of the yard and said he thought Ball-Bey was about to shoot the other officer who was standing near a trash bin. Both officers said Ball-Bey’s gun “flew out� of his hands after being shot.

The off-duty officer said he saw Ball-Bey running with a gun in his hand and his arm extended before the witness ducked behind a parked truck. The witness said he could hear the shooting but could not see it but reported seeing Ball-Bey toss a gun near a trash bin afterward.

Ball-Bey, who worked at Fed-Ex, had no criminal history in Missouri, but photos found on his cellphone and YouTube videos show him wearing T-shirts naming a gang in St. Louis. Joyce said prosecutors had found social media photos of Ball-Bey with a gun that appeared to match the loaded .40-caliber handgun found at the scene. Joyce said that the gun had been reported stolen and that text messages on Ball-Bey’s cellphone discuss a gun of the same make and model.

Jermaine Wooten, a lawyer representing the Ball-Bey family, said at Thursday’s news conference that police were “fortunate� when they picked up a gun that resembles the one that prosecutors say Ball-Bey is seen with on social media postings, but that the gun that police found was not his.

Two other .40-caliber guns were found at the scene of the shooting, but DNA and fingerprint samples were not a match to Ball-Bey, Joyce’s report says. Police said initially that they found the presence of fingerprints and DNA on Ball-Bey’s gun, but ultimately, forensic tests revealed no usable DNA.

Joyce said the lack of DNA on the gun was not unusual, given forensic limitations.

“The only evidence to show that Mr. Ball-Bey did not have a gun was his friend who was with him that day,� Joyce said. “His friend, however, told numerous versions of the events, to the point where we found him to not be credible.�

Joyce said perhaps the most critical evidence was the “independent eyewitness� testimony of the off-duty officer across the alley who said he had seen Ball-Bey with a gun. That officer, Joyce said, has reported misconduct of fellow officers in the past and was deemed a credible eyewitness.

Meanwhile, the credibility of Vaughan — one of the officers who shot Ball-Bey — . In 2013, the judge tossed out drug evidence in a case amid allegations that Vaughan may have planted the evidence.

No independent witness

Graham, the city medical examiner, has told the Post-Dispatch that . However, Graham said, Ball-Bey’s spinal cord didn’t sever immediately, suggesting he could still move after being shot. The finding surprised police because officers and witnesses said Ball-Bey had been running after being shot.

According to Joyce’s report, Graham concluded Ball-Bey died not from a severed spinal cord but from a bullet that punctured his heart, and that his spine could have been severed by the bullet, by movement while running, by police kneeling on his back while handcuffing him, or while his body was being transported or autopsied. Police have said Ball-Bey struggled with officers as they tried to handcuff him.

One key finding in Joyce’s conclusion: “… there were several factors in the execution of this search warrant that we believe need to be reviewed and addressed� by the police department.

Joyce said the two officers who shot at Ball-Bey and the ATF agent “mistakenly entered� the backyard of a nearby corner store instead of the backyard of Ball-Bey’s apartment.

Joyce said no officer conducted surveillance on the rear of Ball-Bey’s building before serving the warrant.

Joyce’s report said prosecutors had interviewed more than two dozen people during the investigation and had made multiple requests for people to come forward with information.

“No independent witness or the person who was with Ball-Bey claims to have seen the entirety of the incident,� Joyce wrote.

Now that Joyce’s office is finished with her review, Dotson says the department will conduct an additional review to discuss tactical lessons learned from the incident.

Meanwhile, Wooten and fellow Ball-Bey family attorney Jerryl Christmas said they would have an independent forensic expert review Graham’s work. They say the family believed police had planted the gun on Ball-Bey.

Ashley Jost and Christine Byers of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.