Shots rang out in quick succession as a peaceful protest in Dallas against police violence took a violent turn Thursday night, leaving 11 officers injured, five fatally.
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Police Chief David Brown blamed “snipers” and said three suspects were in custody while a fourth had exchanged gunfire with authorities in a parking garage downtown and told negotiators he meant to hurt more law enforcement officials. The other suspect was holed up at a parking garage in El Centro college; police are now negotiating with the suspect in an active standoff as of 1:45 a.m. ET. An 11th officer was shot during an exchange of gunfire with a suspect, authorities said.
“We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was”, Brown said.
President Barack Obama on Friday called the shootings of police officers in Dallas “a vicious, despicable and calculated attack on law enforcement”.
– The Dallas Police Department circulated a photo of a man they said was a suspect in the shooting, but later called him a person of interest and said he turned himself in.
Police say one rapid-transit officer has been killed and three injured when gunfire erupted during a protest in downtown Dallas.
Obama, who is in Poland for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit, said he’d conveyed condolences to Dallas’ mayor, and indicated the Federal Bureau of Investigation was involved in investigating the shootings, which left 5 police officers dead.
While details of the attack on the Dallas area police are still emerging, Officer Thompson was one of eleven police officers shot in the ambush, and he succumbed to his wounds.
Authorities questioned two people after a police officer spotted one of them carrying a camouflage bag and walking quickly in the area.
“Hey man, – family, friends – y’all make sure to let the world know, Mark Hughes had nothing to do with that”, he said. Rather the Dallas shooting had the look and feel of a well executed plan that in all likelihood had been long planned in advance and set into motion after patiently waiting to execute.
“In times like this we must remember – and emphasize – the importance of uniting as Americans”, Abbott said.
“We are targets”, LaRhonda Talley said in an impassioned speech in Minnesota. “We made it across the transatlantic”.
Maybe we should walk around killing innocent “white cops” since they find it ok to kill black people for no reason. You’re still killing us! “He matters to me… just like everybody’s son matters to their mama”.
As has become a disgusting norm, both killings were captured on video and posted online. A day later, Philando Castile, 32, was shot during a traffic stop and his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds broadcast the aftermath on Facebook Live.
As their 4-year-old sat in the backseat, she calmly narrated the action and showed viewers the dying man groaning and bleeding in the front seat.
When the shooting began, Taylor threw herself over her sons, Williams said.
Video showed numerous police officers crouching behind vehicles.
Sterling, 37, was killed Tuesday near a convenience store in Baton Rouge, where he regularly sold CDs and DVDs.
Reportedly, when a homeless man approached Sterling and asked for money, becoming so persistent that Sterling showed him his gun and said “I told you to leave me alone”. Flowers and signs piled up in a makeshift memorial.
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Other protests across the US on Thursday were peaceful, including in New York, Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia. Protesters chanted “Hands up, don’t shoot”, the line made famous in the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, about two years ago.
