Demonstrators protesting the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man blocked entrances to Golden 1 Center Thursday night amid chants of “black lives matter,” prompting police to shut down admission to the Sacramento Kings’ game.

The police department tweeted at 10:39 p.m. Eastern Time that no one else would be allowed into the game “due to unforeseen circumstances around Golden 1 Center.”

The Sacramento Bee reported that hundreds of protesters had formed a human chain in front of arena doorways, preventing thousands of fans from entering and leaving seats inside the arena nearly empty.

Videos shared on social media showed protesters chanting “Stephon Clark,” the name of the man who was fatally shot in his grandmother’s back yard Sunday night after police responded to a 911 call about a man breaking vehicle windows. The gun officers thought Clark had in his hand was actually a white iPhone.

The demonstration at Golden 1 Center came after crowds blocked commuters on Interstate 5 during the height of rush hour.

The Sacramento Kings released a statement Thursday night saying, “Due to law enforcement being unable to ensure ticketed fans could safely enter the arena, the arena remains closed and we ask fans outside to travel home.”

After the game, Vivek Ranadive, the team’s principal owner, addressed fans inside the arena. He expressed sympathy to Clark’s family and said the team recognizes people’s right to protest peacefully.

“We stand before you — old, young, black white, brown — and we are all united in our commitment,” Ranadive said. “We recognize that it’s not just business as usual, and we are going to work really hard to bring everybody together to make the world a better place, starting with our own community, and we are going to work really hard to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening again.”

Video released Wednesday night by the Sacramento Police Department depicts a frantic foot pursuit through darkened streets pierced by white slivers of police flashlight. When officers spotted Clark approaching a house, they shouted: “Show me your hands! Stop! Stop!”

[ ‘Brutal’ video shows white officer violently arresting black man sitting on his mother’s porch ]

“He was at the wrong place at the wrong time in his own back yard?” his grandmother, Sequita Thompson, told the Sacramento Bee. “C’mon, now, they didn’t have to do that.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton said in a statement: “It is an atrocity that an unarmed young man was shot at 20 times in his own backyard and shows the urgent need in these times for intervention against police misconduct.”

Sharpton added: “We will call for a complete and thorough investigation into this young man’s death.”

The Sacramento Police Department said the man they believed was breaking windows was the same man the officers killed in a hail of gunfire, identified by the 911 caller as a thin 6-foot male wearing a black hoodie and dark pants.

Police have yet to identify Clark as the suspect or victim.

But Thompson and other relatives identified him to media using variations of his name, Stephon and Stephan. (Public records list him as Stephon Clark, 22.)

Thompson disputes the police department’s version of events.

Her grandson was short, not 6 feet, she said in a video produced by the Bee. She believes another suspect was smashing windows, and that Clark was in the back yard at the wrong time.

Their doorbell is broken, and relatives often tap on the back window for someone to open the garage door, the family told the newspaper. Clark was staying at his grandmother’s home at the time he was killed.

The gunfire startled her that night, she told the Bee.

The family said Clark had two young sons, Cairo and Aiden, and a fiancee, Salena Manni, the Associated Press reported.

Thompson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

[ Officer charged with murder in shooting death of unarmed woman in Minneapolis alley ]

The narrative of the Sunday night shooting released by authorities tells a short, grim story.

The helicopter observed a suspect picking up a “toolbar” and breaking a window to a house after 9 p.m. Sunday night. The Bee reported it was the sliding glass door belonging to a neighbor.

Authorities said the suspect then ran and looked into a car.

Police in the helicopter guided officers on the ground to the front yard of Thompson’s house as Clark was coming from the back. They met in the middle, and soon Clark was dead.

“Prior to the shooting, the involved officers saw the suspect facing them, advance forward with his arms extended, and holding an object in his hands,” police said in a statement. “At the time of the shooting, the officers believed the suspect was pointing a firearm at them. After an exhaustive search, scene investigators did not locate any firearms. The only items found near the suspect was a cell phone.”

An analysis by The Washington Post found that 987 people were killed by police last year — 68 of them unarmed. Of those unarmed victims, 30 were white, 20 were black and 13 were Hispanic, showing an overrepresentation of African Americans among the total U.S. population. Five of the remaining fatalities were of unknown or other race.

At least 230 people have been killed by police this year, according to The Post’s database on fatal force.

“I know there could have been another way; he didn’t have to die,” Clark’s brother Stevante told CBS News.

“You’re going to know his name forever,” he added before reciting the names of several black men who were killed by police: “You’re going to remember it, like, how you know … Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice. You’re going to know him. You’re going to remember this.”

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg offered his condolences to Clark’s family and said in a statement that he was “heartbroken” for the city.

“The questions raised by the community and council members are appropriate and must be answered during the investigation,” Steinberg said, though he noted that he had reviewed the police videos carefully and said: “Based on the videos alone, I cannot second-guess the split-second decisions of our officers and I’m not going to do that.”

[ This white man says he faced a ‘serious threat.’ Police say he committed a hate crime. ]

Clark is at least the sixth person shot and killed by the Sacramento Police Department since the beginning of 2015, according to a Post analysis: Five of them were black men; the other, a white man.

The October 2015 shooting of Adriene Ludd and the September 2017 shooting of Eric Arnold were the only two of the six fatal Sacramento police shootings in which the person killed was armed with a gun.

Police say Ludd fled after a traffic stop and fired at officers before he was killed.

Arnold, a suspect in a double homicide, shot two police officers before he was shot and killed.

Matt Coates was holding a plastic BB gun when he was shot and killed in May 2015; his girlfriend would later tell reporters that she had told the officers that the gun wasn’t real. In two of the cases — the fatal shootings of Dazion Flenaugh and Joseph Mann — Sacramento police killed people alleged to have been armed with a knife.

Clark, it appears, was unarmed.

How many times Clark was shot is unknown, authorities said, pending the investigation. The officers are on paid administrative leave as the probe unfolds, officials said.

Detective Eddie Macauley of the Sacramento Police said Wednesday he was unsure what model of weapon the officers used, or if the 10 rounds each of them fired was the entire capacity of their magazines.

The police said five minutes passed before responding officers arrived to cuff Clark and render first aid, which ultimately proved futile: He died at the scene.

That timeline is not precise, according to the footage. Five minutes and 16 seconds pass between the radio call of shots fired and when officers snap on the cuffs. Several more seconds pass before someone on scene begins chest compressions.

A single sentence of department guidance on providing medical attention to suspects reads: “Officers shall provide first aid to injured parties if it can be done safely.”

Some factors may affect how and if police render aid to someone they shoot, such as if they are resisting or if police think a weapon is present, said Macauley, the police detective.

In the video, the officers did not appear to be fearful of an attack once Clark was down.

He wasn’t moving, an officer notes. One officer, showing no clear urgency to replenish his ammunition, waits a minute and a half before he reloads.

“Sir, can you move?” an arriving officer calls into the night at Clark, minutes after the shooting, telling him they cannot help unless they know he does not have a weapon.

[ ‘I’m going to hit him’: Dash-cam video shows officers tried to run over man before shooting him 14 times ]

Police allowed Clark’s family to review the body camera video before it was publicly released — part of a departmental policy change, according to the Bee:

Allowing family to see such videos before they are released to the public is part of a city policy adopted in late 2016 by the city of Sacramento after the fatal shooting by police of Joseph Mann, a mentally ill black man. Mann’s shooting led to major changes in the department, including a requirement that all patrol officers wear body cameras.

The changes also require police to release videos in “critical incidents” such as officer-involved shootings and deaths in custody within 30 days of the event. Sacramento police Chief Daniel Hahn, the city’s first African American chief, has been releasing videos more quickly than the requirement and for a broader range of events than covered by the new law since taking over the department last summer.

“As soon as they did the command, they started shooting,” Clark’s aunt Saquois Durham told the Bee. “They said ‘Put your hands up, gun,’ and then they just let loose on my nephew.”

Said Les Simmons, a pastor and community activist: “Even if he did what they say was done, at the end of the day it does not justify his life being taken.”

Simmons called into question what was left off the released video, particularly at the end.

Before the video concludes, the two officers walk to the street, nearly seven minutes after the shooting.

Shimmering red and blue lights silhouette an approaching group of officers. Their faces are blurred.

“Hey mute?” an officer says. The audio goes silent, and shortly after, the videos end.

“It clearly implies to me that they’re on the scene trying to figure out the coverup,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who spoke with Clark’s mother Wednesday and whose civil rights group is helping the family find legal representation. “You’re standing over a dead body that you thought had a gun, you find out he had no gun, and your immediate impulse is to mute the sound.”

This post has been updated.

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President Trump’s senior advisers were thrown when he told Russian President Vladi­mir Putin on Tuesday that he expected to meet with him soon, as briefings before the call to Moscow included no mention of a possible meeting, and aides have not been instructed to prepare for one, senior administration officials said.

Although Trump told reporters that “probably we’ll be seeing President Putin in the not-too-distant future,” several officials said there are no plans for the two even to be in the same country until November, when both are expected to attend a Group of 20 summit in Argentina.

Amid criticism by some lawmakers of his congratulatory call to Putin, whose 76 percent win in the Russian election Sunday was denounced as a “sham” by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), Trump tweeted Wednesday that “getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing” and said that Moscow could help the United States solve a range of international problems.

[With Trump’s pledge to hold arms-control talks, U.S. glimpses possible common ground with Russia]

Referring to his immediate three predecessors in office, Trump said that George W. Bush didn’t have the “smarts” to get along with the Russians, and that Barack Obama and Bill Clinton “didn’t have the energy or the chemistry.”

Trump’s briefing materials for the Putin call, placed in a binder by the staff secretary’s office for Trump’s review, did not include any reference to a meeting, and specifically warned against congratulating the Russian president, said a person with direct knowledge who, like other officials, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations.

Senior White House officials have previously opposed a bilateral meeting with the Russian president.

Hours before the White House even acknowledged that Trump had spoken to Putin, the Kremlin put its own spin on the call, saying that Trump had called to congratulate Putin and that “special attention was paid to making progress on the question of holding a possible meeting at the highest level.”

The Russian statement forced the hand of the White House, where advisers had disagreed on whether to include Trump’s congratulations in the official U.S. account, two people familiar with the conversation said. When the official White House readout of the call emerged several hours later, it said Trump had congratulated Putin but made no mention of a discussion of a meeting.

For Trump, such spur-of-the-moment remarks to foreign leaders are not unusual, and often have had little lasting meaning, officials said, noting that he often issues invitations to a meal or a meeting.

The call to Putin was the second time this month that Trump has made an impromptu announcement that he planned to meet with a foreign leader, although his March 8 decision to hold talks with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un appeared to carry more weight and has sparked a flurry of internal planning.

Both moves bore the hallmarks of an emboldened president who appears increasingly comfortable in disregarding the advice of his most senior advisers, and facing off with the most implacable U.S. foes, regardless of the potential risks.

“No one was planning on a meeting with Putin at this point, given all the questions about continuing Russian interference in our elections and the ongoing Mueller probe, never mind the . . . poisoning” of a former Russian double agent this month in Britain, said Angela Stent, who was a national intelligence officer with a focus on Russia in the administration of President George W. Bush. “This shows that Trump continues to believe that he can make a ‘deal’ with Putin and is unconstrained by his advisers who have been arguing for restraint and caution.”

[Votes for Putin surged among Russians in the West]

Advocates of closer ties between the United States and Russia also defended Trump’s decision to dictate his own meeting with the Russian leader as well within his prerogative.

“The president is signaling that he is going to take center spotlight as diplomat in chief,” said Matt Rojansky, a Russia scholar at the Wilson Center. “I can imagine he does not want to wait to be directed or handled by the bureaucracy on even these extremely difficult negotiations, because he has spent his adult life negotiating deals. It might mean he gets out ahead of his advisers, but their job is to catch up, and they will.”

Although Trump said early in his campaign that he and the Russian leader were good friends, he later acknowledged that he had never met Putin. The two presidents subsequently sat down together at last summer’s G-20 meeting in Germany, and at an Asia-Pacific economic summit in November.

One senior U.S. official attributed Trump’s resistance to guidance that he should distance himself from Putin to the president’s belief that he should not have to forfeit his pursuit of better relations with Moscow to a Russia investigation at home that he thinks is illegitimate.

In an interview with NBC this month, Putin aligned himself with Trump’s stated belief that good relations with Russia are a priority. Asked why Trump was “always so nice to you,” Putin said that “this is not about being nice to me personally, in my view. I think he is an experienced person, a businessman with very extensive experience, and he understands that if you need to partner with someone, you must treat your future or current partner with respect, otherwise nothing will come of it. I think this is a purely pragmatic approach.”

Some administration officials defended Trump’s personal approach to Putin, noting that what he said was often different from what he did, such as imposing new sanctions this month against Russia, and his decision to send lethal U.S. weapons to Ukraine to aid the country’s fight against Russian-backed separatists, something President Barack Obama had declined to do.

In his tweets Wednesday, Trump said Russia could “help solve problems with North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, ISIS, Iran and even the coming Arms Race.” In Syria and Ukraine, the United States has been harshly critical of Russian actions — to little avail — and has charged that Russia’s ongoing support for ­Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has made the final defeat of the Islamic State more difficult.

Moscow also continues a close relationship with Tehran, and the United States has accused Russia of helping North Korea evade sanctions.

Seeking to deflect criticism of Trump’s call to Putin, the White House issued a statement Wednesday noting that Obama, too, had called Putin to congratulate him on a previous electoral victory.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel also congratulated Putin this week.

Britain has accused Russia of responsibility for the recent nerve agent attack in Britain on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, who served as a double agent for Britain before settling there. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Wednesday compared Putin’s promotion of this summer’s World Cup soccer tournament in Russia to Adolf Hitler’s use of the 1936 Berlin Olympics for propaganda purposes.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the Skripal poisoning — about which Trump signed a letter, along with his counterparts in Britain, Germany and France, blaming Russia — did not come up during the phone call with Putin.

But after a call Wednesday with French President Emmanuel Macron, the White House issued a statement saying, “The Presidents reiterated their solidarity with the United Kingdom in the wake of Russia’s use of chemical weapons against private citizens on British soil and agreed on the need to take action to hold Russia accountable.”

Anne Gearan and John Wagner in Washington, William Booth in London, Griff Witte in Berlin and James McAuley in Paris contributed to this report.