BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – The man who killed two police officers and a sheriff’s deputy in Baton Rouge was a former Marine sergeant who served in Iraq and had no known ties to any extremist groups.
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Friends and family of Jackson (32) were mourning the veteran of the police force that relatives described as a “gentle giant” and a “protector” after he and another two law enforcement officers were shot and killed Sunday morning by a gunman.
He sought out officers in a city where one of the police killings had occurred, and he took their lives in retribution.
Hours before Monday’s press conference in Louisiana, a judge in Baltimore, Maryland, handed down a not guilty ruling in a case against the highest-ranking officer on trial of a black man who died in police custody after suffering a spinal injury.
“I just want us to have peace and drive down the road and not feel like we have to duck our heads and look around and see if someone’s going to be on top of a roof”, said Pam Collins, a resident of a Baton Rouge suburb who brought three shiny balloons to honor the officers.
The three are among 10 law enforcement officers killed over a span of 10 turbulent days around the country by attackers – at a protest march in Dallas, a courthouse in MI and now a convenience store in Baton Rouge.
Officials believe Long acted alone but say they are continuing to explore any possible connections he may have had to people in Louisiana. East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Deputy Brad Garafola was a 24-year-veteran and father of four.
Deputy Nicholas Tullier was also wounded and is now “fighting for his life”, Sheriff Sid Gautreaux said. “You couldn’t help but like him if you knew him”, Cavalier said. Long got an associate of arts degree in general studies from the college, school records show.
On the affluent south side of Baton Rouge, a clutch of plastic balloons bobs in front of the gas station where an ex-U.S. A 41-year-old Baton Rouge police officer who has been on the force for nine years and suffered non-life-threatening injuries has not been named.
A tweet on his account Saturday, the day before the Baton Rouge attack, read: “And just bc (because) you shed your physical body doesn’t mean that you’re dead”.
On Monday, Trump continued his attacks on President Barack Obama’s responses to recent law enforcement crises, at one point offering the weird view that Obama’s oft-repeated support for police was not genuine: “But you just look at the body language – there’s something going on”. Police told CNN that Sunday’s shootings did not appear to be race-related.
He left a long trail of information online about his beliefs under the pseudonym Cosmo Setepenra.
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Undeterred, Long located another possible target at a nearby vehicle wash. After the shooting of five officers in Dallas on July 7, Chicago police ordered officers to work in pairs. But that history – and the racial divide in nearby Baton Rouge – seem remote here.
