Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, called in the national guard on Thursday as the city of Minneapolis braced for a third night of mass protests over the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man whose neck was knelt on by a white police officer for almost eight minutes despite his cries of “I can’t breathe”. Thousands protested in the city on Wednesday night. Though most demonstrators were peaceful, rioting in the Longfellow neighborhood saw buildings burned, stores looted and angry graffiti scrawled on walls demanding justice. Amid the violence, a man was found fatally shot near a pawn shop, possibly by the owner, authorities investigating said. It was the second consecutive night of violent protests following the death of Floyd, who died on Monday. In footage recorded by a bystander, an officer kneels on Floyd’s neck, and he can be heard pleading that he can’t breathe until he slowly stops talking and moving. Another protest was announced for Thursday evening near county offices downtown. Some stores in Minneapolis and the suburbs planned to close early. The city shut down its light-rail system and planned to stop all bus service “out of concern for the safety of riders and employees”, a statement said. Police had arrested Floyd outside a convenience store after a report of a counterfeit bill being passed. The US attorney’s office and the FBI in Minneapolis said on Thursday they were conducting “a robust criminal investigation” into the death and making the case a priority. The announcement came a day after Donald Trump tweeted that he had asked an investigation to be expedited. The FBI is also investigating, focusing on whether Floyd’s civil rights were violated. The officer who kneeled on Floyd and three others were fired on Tuesday. The next day, the mayor called for him to be criminally charged. Around midday on Thursday, the violence spread to a Target store several miles away in the Midway neighborhood of St Paul, where police said 50 to 60 people rushed the store and attempted to take merchandise. St Paul police and state patrol squad cars later blocked the entrance, but looting then spread to shops along nearby University Avenue, one of St Paul’s main commercial corridors, and other spots in the city. A St Paul spokesman, Steve Linders, said authorities had been dealing with unrest in roughly 20 different areas throughout the city. “Please stay home. Please do not come here to protest. Please keep the focus on George Floyd, on advancing our movement, and on preventing this from ever happening again. We can all be in that fight together,” St Paul’s mayor, Melvin Carter, tweeted. Walz called for widespread changes in the wake of Floyd’s death. “It is time to rebuild. Rebuild the city, rebuild our justice system, and rebuild the relationship between law enforcement and those they’re charged to protect. George Floyd’s death should lead to justice and systemic change, not more death and destruction,” Walz said. By Thursday morning in Minneapolis, smoke rose from smoldering buildings in the Longfellow neighborhood, scene of the worst violence. In a strip mall across the street from the police’s 3rd precinct station, the focus of the previous night’s protests, the windows in nearly every business had been smashed, from the large Target department store at one end to the Planet Fitness gym at the other. Only the 24-hour laundromat appeared to have escaped unscathed. “WHY US?” demanded a large expanse of red graffiti scrawled on the wall of the Target. A Wendy’s restaurant across the street was charred almost beyond recognition. “We’re burning our own neighborhood,” said a distraught Deona Brown, a 24-year-old woman standing with a friend outside the precinct station, where a small group of protesters were shouting at a dozen or so stone-faced police officers in riot gear. “This is where we live, where we shop, and they destroyed it.” “What that cop did was wrong, but I’m scared now,” Brown said. But others in the crowd saw something different in the wreckage. Protesters destroyed property “because the system is broken”, said a young man who identified himself only by his nickname, Cash, and who said he had been in the streets during the violence. He dismissed the idea that the destruction would hurt residents of the largely black neighborhood. “They’re making money off of us,” he said angrily of the owners of the destroyed stores. He laughed when asked if he had joined in the looting or violence: “I didn’t break anything.” The protests that began on Wednesday night and extended into Thursday were more violent than Tuesday’s, which included skirmishes between offices and protesters but no widespread property damage or looting. Mayor Jacob Frey appealed for calm. “Please, Minneapolis, we cannot let tragedy beget more tragedy,” he said on Twitter. Protests also spread to other US cities. In California, hundreds of people protesting Floyd’s death blocked a Los Angeles freeway and shattered windows of California Highway Patrol cruisers. Memphis police blocked a main thoroughfare after a racially mixed group of protesters gathered outside a police precinct. The last time the Minnesota national guard was called out to deal with civil unrest was in a backup role during the 2008 Republican National Convention in St Paul. The most comparable situation to the current disturbances happened when the guard was called up to deal with the riots in Minneapolis in 1967, a summer when anger over racial inequalities came to a boil in many cities across the country.