A former transit police officer who shot an unarmed black man to death in U.S. west coast city Oakland was arrested and has been charged with murder, local newspapers reported on Wednesday.

Johannes Mehserle, 27, was arrested Tuesday evening at a friend's home in U.S. state Nevada and will be returned to California's Alameda County, where Oakland is located, the San Francisco Chronicle said in a report.

Cell phone videos taken by witnesses showed that Mehserle shot in the back of 22-year-old Oscar Grant while the black man was lying face-down on a train station in Oakland in the early morning of Jan. 1.

Grant died shortly after the shooting and a week later, Mehserle resigned from BART, the San Francisco Bay area's rapid-transit commuter rail system that he worked for, but refused to talk to investigators.

The videos of the shooting have been widely circulated on the Internet and prompted violent protests in the streets of Oakland, a city about 13 kilometers east of San Francisco. Some protesters demanded criminal prosecutions against Mehserle.

Speaking at a news conference Wednesday, Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff confirmed that his office has charged Mehserle with murder because the evidence showed that Grant was the victim of an unlawful, intentional killing.

"From the evidence we have, there's nothing that would mitigate that, something lower than murder," Orloff said.

Mehserle's arrest and murder charge was welcomed by John Burris, an attorney representing Grant's family, who said it is "a very important step in healing the community."

Authorities in Oakland also hoped the news of Mehserle being charged could calm tensions among the angry public.

More than 1,000 people are expected to take to the streets of downtown Oakland Wednesday afternoon to protest Mehserle's fatal shooting, The Oakland Tribune newspaper reported.

Source:Xinhua