Dallas sniper suspect Micah Xavier Johnson wrote letters in his own blood on a wall in the room where he was holed up, then later killed by a police-deployed robot, police said.
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Brown said a search of Johnson’s home showed the gunman had practiced using explosives, and that other evidence suggested he wanted to use them against law enforcement.
He said a neighbor told police they saw Johnson doing some sort of tactical training in his backyard.
Johnson also demanded to speak with a Black negotiator, Brown said.
Asked what he’d say to demonstrators across the country who took to the streets recently in protest of police shootings of black men, Brown said: “We are sworn to protect you and your right to protest, and we will give our lives for it”. 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.
The police chief again defended the decision to kill Johnson with a bomb delivered by remote-controlled robot, had “already killed us in a grave way, and officers were in surgery that didn’t make it”.
Johnson donned a protective vest and used a military-style semi-automatic rifle for the shootings, which marked the deadliest day for US law enforcement since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Five officers were fatally shot just a few blocks from where President John F. Kennedy was slain in 1963.
In another corner of the country, a Seattle officer accepted a matching flower from Jasen Frelot, one of several people from the faith community there who set out to show police support.
Authorities have said the 25-year-old gunman kept a journal of combat tactics and had amassed a personal arsenal at his home that included bomb-making materials. Johnson had explosive materials “large enough to have devastating affects throughout our city and north Texas area”, the chief said.
“If this had not been a crime of opportunity where the protest was quickly organized in response to events in the same week. he could have caused a lot more harm than he did”, he said.
Federal agents are trying to trace the origin of the weapons used by Johnson, including a military-style semi-automatic rifle. The large crime scene includes the parking garage where Johnson was killed and |at least two other sites where |he is believed to have fired at officers.
Johnson was a private first class with a specialty in carpentry and masonry. He had served from March 2009 to April 2015 in the Army Reserve and did one tour of duty in Afghanistan.
The sniper, Micah X Johnson, a black U.S. military veteran of the Afghan war, said he wanted to “kill white people” following the fatal shootings of two black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota, officials said.
Police also found a journal in which the Army veteran detailed tactical movements, including one called “shoot and move”, which is meant to create confusion about the number and location of gunmen, keep a shooter safe from return fire and maximize the amount of damage inflicted on targets, said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins.
Two El Centro students hid in the building overnight, Brown said, because they were afraid to come out until the shooting stopped.
Almost two dozen law enforcement officers were injured and more than 100 protesters arrested in St Paul, Minnesota, overnight as demonstrators blocked a major highway.
Shaw was struck by a bullet as he guarded an entrance to the college, the statement said. In 1986, Dallas police officers killed or wounded 29 civilians in shootings.
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The chief of police in Dallas received death threats “almost immediately after” an attack that killed 5 officers in the city, he told reporters Monday.
