Saturday’s protests followed demonstrations on Friday and similar ones on Thursday night in Dallas, Texas, where an armed USA army reservist shot dead five white police officers and wounded seven others in an apparent retaliation for repeated police killings of unarmed African Americans across the country.
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The killing of Micah Johnson using a robot-delivered bomb ended a night of terror in which he shot 14 officers, killing five of them, and also wounded two civilians.
Johnson had explosive materials “large enough to have devastating affects throughout our city and north Texas area”, the chief said.
“We’re convinced that this suspect had other plans”, the police chief told CNN, adding that the gunman may have expedited his plans in retaliation for the fatal police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota last week.
Brown said at a news conference Monday that the suspect, 25-year-old Micah Johnson, had “already killed us in a grave way, and officers were in surgery that didn’t make it”.
Johnson, an Army Reserve veteran, had been excited to join the military and was passionate about protecting his country, Johnson’s parents said in an interview with The Blaze set to air this week.
His father, James Johnson, said haltingly and through tears: “I don’t know what to say to anybody to make anything better”.
“Great job by our officers!” police chief David Brown tweeted after an all-clear was issued soon after. There are reports that he was struggling with mental illness of some level and snapped after the recent killing of two black men by police.
The journal found in Mr Johnson’s house had proved “hard to decipher”, Mr Brown said. The Dallas Transit agency cited “police activity”.
“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 so there was no progress on the negotiation”, the police chief said. 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. “To decide for themselves whether this wants to be senseless and useless, absurd moment in life or if it has a goal and a grander plan to make us a stronger country, a stronger city and a stronger world”.
Fort Worth police say they are investigating whether the crash was an accident or deliberate.
Earlier on Saturday, President Barack Obama said the U.S. was “not as divided as some have suggested” in the wake of the shootings involving African-Americans.
He also told CNN that during the roughly two-hour standoff in the garage, Johnson lied to and taunted the police negotiators.
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“I don’t think you can hold well-meaning activists. responsible for everything that’s uttered at a protest”, he said.
