Initially it was thought there were two more suspects at large but Superintendent Colonel Mike Edmonson said: “There is not an active shooter scenario in Baton Rouge”.
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Louisiana State Police announced last week that they had received credible threats of lethal plots against Baton Rouge police and had arrested three men and a 13-year-old boy. Gov. John Bel Edwards asked the public to pray for the officers involved nad their families. “We demand law and order”. The races of the suspects and the officers in Sunday’s shooting were not immediately known. “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us”, he said.
A witness to Sunday’s shootings, Brady Vancel, told a CBS television affiliate he had seen a gunman, a second man in a red shirt lying in a parking lot and another gunman running away “as shots were being fired back and forth from several guns”.
Obama attended a memorial service for five Dallas police officers last week and also led a almost four-hour meeting featuring dozens of leaders from police organizations, community activists and elected officials.
Baton Rouge police responded to a call around 8:30 a.m.
Baton Rouge Officer Montrell Jackson was killed during a firefight in Baton Rouge, Louisiana Sunday morning. Two other suspects whom police are seeking were believed to be wearing all-black military fatigues at the time of the shooting, this person said.
“We as a nation have to be loud and clear that nothing justifies violence against law enforcement”, Obama said.
Two people have been detained in another town called Addis, which is near Baton Rouge, and called them “persons of interest”.
This latest attack on law enforcement comes in a city still reeling from the Alton Sterling shooting less than two weeks ago when cell phone footage captured two police officers fatally shooting the black man who had no weapons in his hand.
Terrance Carter spoke Sunday to The Associated Press by telephone, saying the family just wants peace and that his uncle would not want this violence.
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. Officers from both agencies sustained injuries and were transported to the local hospitals.
The shooting began at a gas station on Airline Highway. He also said the country would have to “just grind it out” in solving the tensions.
A Baton Rouge police spokesmen said the department had made significant strides toward diversity in its force.
Baton Rouge police officers man a roadblock at Old Hammond Highway and Tara Boulevard after multiple officers were shot, Sunday, July 17, 2016, in Baton Rouge, La.
The FBI New Orleans office said it “has personnel on scene in Baton Rouge to assist our law enforcement colleagues. Then we started getting texts about officers down”, she said.
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Unlike after his most recent remarks following USA shooting incidents, Obama did not make any calls – overt or otherwise – for tighter gun control laws.
