The president said the attack is “the work of cowards who speak for no one”, and that the White House is offering any support necessary to authorities.
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CNN reports that, according to sources, a total of seven officers were shot in an ambush on Sunday morning including the three now feared dead.
“We may not yet know the motives for this attack, but I want to be clear: there is no justification for violence against law enforcement”.
Don Coppola tells CNN the dead suspect was wearing “some type of mask to hide (the shooter’s) identity” after they responded to a call involving a “suspicious person walking down Airline Highway with an assault rifle”, the shooting began.
He says the suspect’s body was found next door, outside of a fitness center.
Law enforcement officials are asking the entire community to remain indoors if possible and to report any suspicious activity to law enforcement either with your local police department or by calling 1-800-CALL-FBI. Police could be seen checking the deceased suspect with a robot for explosives.
Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, called the attack on the police in Baton Rouge, La., “an assault on all of us”, and said it was a time for unity.
The man suspected of fatally shooting three Baton Rouge police officers and wounding three others has been identified as a black male named Gavin Eugene Long, according to multiple news reports.
Public records indicate that Long has lived in two Missouri cities – Kansas City and Grandview – as well as Tuscaloosa, Ala., where he apparently was a student at the University of Alabama. The group said the administration needed to show political leadership by “supporting them and giving them the resources they need to protect themselves and their communities”.
It appears the incident began before police officers arrived on scene. He also said the country would have to “just grind it out” in solving the tensions.
In a national address Sunday afternoon, Obama said that when he was in Dallas he told the crowd at an interfaith memorial that the shooter would not be the last person who tries to make communities turn on each other.
“It’s my understanding that they (the officers) had responded to an initial shooting incident”, Casey Rayborn Hicks, public affairs officer for the sheriff’s office, told local WAFB television. Officer Matthew Gerald, 41, and Montrell Jackson, 32, were from the Baton Rouge Police Department.
The shooting happened early Sunday, less than 1 mile from police headquarters.
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Authorities initially believed that other assailants might be at large, but hours later said that no other active shooters were on the loose. The killing was captured on widely circulated cellphone video.
