Delphine Johnson, Micah Johnson’s mother who he lived with, said that before serving in the military her son was happy and outgoing, but after being discharged from the Army in 2015, he turned into “a hermit”. “He was very disappointed”.
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Micah served as a reservist in the U.S. Army for approximately six years, including a seven-month deployment to Afghanistan. His stepmother Donna is white.
“I didn’t see it coming”, said the 25-year-old’s father, breaking down in tears.
Johnson fatally shot five officers while hundreds of people were gathered in downtown Dallas to protest recent fatal police shootings, and wounded nine others officers and two civilians.
That strategy triggered the debate over when it’s appropriate to use a robot to kill unsafe suspects instead of continuing to negotiate their surrender. The city’s police chief vigorously defended the tactic.
“This wasn’t an ethical dilemma for me”, he said. “I would use any tool necessary to save our officers’ lives”.
The bomb technician said the gunman wasn’t a novice and “knew what he was doing”, Brown told reporters today.
“I’ll do it again if presented with the same circumstances”, Brown said. “While I think that it’s disturbing and gives us pause, I think the real question we have to think about here is: What does this look like the next time a police department wants to do this? We don’t have any evidence of that”.
Police now say he had been planning something big long beforehand, and that last week’s deaths were a trigger.
President Barack Obama cautioned protesting Americans against casting all police as racially biased. Some passing cars honked in support.
“He just basically lied to us; playing games, laughing at us, singing, asking how many did he get and that he wanted to kill some more and that there were bombs there”, Brown said, explaining that negotiations had broken down. He said that indicated the killer could have done more damage with more time but used the protest in Dallas to strike in a more limited, albeit deadly, fashion.
Sarah Preibisius, wife of Dallas Police Officer Justin Preibisius, kneels next to a memorial in honour of fallen Dallas police officers on Sunday, July 10, 2016. Around 50 people were arrested in St. Paul, and officials say 21 police officers were injured.
A candlelight vigil was set for 8 p.m. on Monday in Dallas City Hall plaza. In Louisiana, a man was accused of posting a video online showing him in his vehicle behind a police auto, saying he wanted to shoot and kill an officer.
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An undated handout image released by the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Police shows DART police officer Brent Thompson at an undisclosed location. He pointed to a threat he received from a private Facebook page to the Dallas Police Department’s page that is being investigated. Plans for the other officers killed were not yet clear.
