Everett Matthews of Baton Rouge, La., holds up a sign Tuesday outside the Triple S Food Mart where Alton Sterling was killed last year in Baton Rouge, La. The U.S. Justice Department has decided not to charge two white Baton Rouge police officers in Sterling's death.

BATON ROUGE, La. — The Justice Department’s decision not to charge two white Baton Rouge police officers in the shooting death of a black man may not be the final legal chapter in a case that reverberated far beyond Louisiana’s capital.

The department’s decision doesn’t preclude state authorities from conducting their own investigation of Alton Sterling’s fatal shooting last summer and pursuing their own criminal charges in the case.

A person familiar with the Justice Department’s decision disclosed it to The Associated Press on Tuesday. The person was not authorized to talk publicly about the decision and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Dozens of people gathered Tuesday evening outside the Baton Rouge convenience store where Sterling was shot and killed during a struggle with the two officers on July 5, 2016. At the vigil, residents and community activists held hands and prayed before urging state authorities to step in and take action.

Some called for Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office to investigate. Mya Richardson, an 18-year-old activist, read out Landry’s Twitter handle and office phone number over a microphone and urged the crowd to “show him how angry you are.”

Raheejah Flowers, 16, fought back tears as she told the crowd that “this is not the end.”

“We are not going to take this sitting down,” she said. “Alton did not die here for us to suck it up and move on.”

Police arrested nearly 200 protesters in Baton Rouge in July following Sterling’s death, which occurred a day before another black man was killed by police in Minnesota.

Racial tensions in Baton Rouge were simmering when a black military veteran from Missouri ambushed and killed three Baton Rouge law enforcement officers and wounded three others before being shot dead on July 17. The city was still reeling from the shootings when August floodwaters damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of homes in the area.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards immediately asked for a federal investigation of Sterling’s death. He called cell phone video of the incident “disturbing, to say the least.”

No public announcement has been made by the Justice Department as of late Tuesday, and many officials in Baton Rouge said they haven’t been notified.

Sterling, 37, was selling homemade CDs outside the Triple S Food Mart before his deadly confrontation with police. Two cell phone videos of Sterling’s struggle with the two officers, Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II, quickly spread on social media after the shooting.

A police report says Sterling was initially jolted with a stun gun after he didn’t comply with the officers’ commands to put his hands on the hood of a car. The report also says the officers saw the butt of a gun in one of Sterling’s pants pockets and saw him try to reach for it before he was shot.