US Dallas sniper in Texas wanted to kill white police over black deaths

Dallas police officers escort residents near the scene where five police officers were killed on July 7, 2016 in Dallas, Texas. (AFP photo)

The US gunman in Dallas, Texas, who killed five police officers and wounded seven more in a coordinated attack that ended with the shooter’s death, said he wanted to kill white officers over the fatal shooting of black people.
The attack, the deadliest day for police in the US since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, came during one of several protests across the country against the killing of two black men by police this week.
The deaths of the two black men at the hands of police in the states of Louisiana and Minnesota were the latest in a long string of killings that gave rise to the Black Lives Matter social movement.
On Thursday, protesters in Chicago, New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and other cities took to the streets to slam the killings.
Authorities said Friday that Thursday night's ambush on police was carefully planned and executed and said they had arrested three suspects before killing the fourth after a long standoff.
"We had an exchange of gunfire with the suspect. We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot," Dallas Police Chief David Brown told reporters at the Dallas City Hall.
"The suspect said he was upset about Black Lives Matter," said Brown, who is African American. "He said he was upset about the recent police shootings. The suspect said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated that he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers."
The suspect also told police "the end is coming" and that more police were going to be hurt and killed.
The deadly attack comes as two black men were killed this week by police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and outside Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The shootings, which police say were carried out by two snipers from elevated positions, occurred at around 9 p.m. Thursday as a protest rally was drawing to an end.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said a total of 12 police officers and two civilians were shot during the attack. The mayor said three of the officers who were shot were women.
US President Barack Obama, who was in Poland for a NATO summit, called the attack “vicious, calculated and despicable.”
The wounded police were taken to Parkland hospital, the same hospital where former President John F. Kennedy was taken after he was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963.
Police in the United States killed over 1,150 people in 2015, with the largest police departments disproportionately killing at least 321 African Americans, according to data compiled by an activist group that runs the Mapping Police Violence project.


A day after five officers were shot to death at a protest march, Dallas authorities said that a man suspected in the slayings had been upset about police shootings of two black men earlier this week and wanted to kill whites, "especially white officers."
The man was chased into a parking garage, where he exchanged fire with officers, who later killed him with a robot-delivered bomb, Police Chief David Brown said. But before his death, he described his motive during negotiations, according to the chief.
The confrontation followed the deadliest day for US law enforcement since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

NEW: Photo shows #Dallas shooting suspect ID'd as 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson https://t.co/ImEtSSNmRf pic.twitter.com/1iMXKpmMzB

— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 8, 2016

Brown blamed "snipers" for Thursday's attack, but it was unclear how many shooters were involved. Authorities initially said three suspects were in custody and the fourth dead. Hours later, officials were vague and would not discuss details.
Before dying, the police chief said, the suspect also stated that he acted alone and was not affiliated with any groups, Brown said.

Investigators leave the home of Micah Xavier Johnson in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite, Texas. Photo / AP

Law enforcement officials did not immediately disclose the race of the suspect or the dead officers.
The bloodshed unfolded just a few blocks from where President John F. Kennedy was slain in 1963.
The shooting began about 8.45 pm Thursday while hundreds of people were gathered to protest the killings in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and suburban St Paul, Minnesota. Brown told reporters that snipers fired "ambush-style" on the officers. Two civilians also were wounded.
Authorities said they were not sure they had located all possible suspects, but attention on Friday quickly turned to the man killed in the parking garage.
A Texas law enforcement official identified him as Micah Johnson, 25.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he said he was not authorised to release the information. There were no immediate details on the suspect's middle name or hometown.

Five red roses are seen on the bronze medallion at The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington. Photo / AP

By midday, investigators were seen walking in and out of a home believed to be Johnson's in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite.
The Army said Johnson served in the Army Reserve from March 2009 to April 2015 and did one tour in Afghanistan. He was a private first class with a specialty in carpentry and masonry. His Afghanistan deployment spanned from November 2013 to July 2014.
None of the other suspects was identified, and the police chief said he would not disclose any details about them until authorities were sure everyone involved was in custody.
The nation's top law enforcement official, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, called for calm, saying the recent violence can't be allowed to "precipitate a new normal".
Lynch said protesters concerned about killings by police should not be discouraged "by those who use your lawful actions as a cover for their heinous violence."

An investigator walks the scene of a shooting in downtown Dallas. Photo / AP

It appeared the shooters "planned to injure and kill as many officers as they could", Brown said.
Video from the scene showed protesters marching along a downtown street about half a mile from City Hall when shots erupted and the crowd scattered, seeking cover. Officers crouched beside vehicles, armored SWAT team vehicles arrived and a helicopter hovered overhead.
Demonstrations were held in several other US cities Thursday night to protest the police killings of two more black men: A Minnesota officer on Wednesday fatally shot Philando Castile while he was in a car with a woman and a child, and the shooting's aftermath was livestreamed in a widely shared Facebook video. A day earlier, Alton Sterling was shot in Louisiana after being pinned to the pavement by two white officers. That, too, was captured on a cellphone video.

A Dallas police officer, who did not want to be identified, takes a moment as she guards an intersection in the early morning after a shooting in downtown Dallas. Photo / AP

The Dallas shootings occurred in an area of hotels, restaurants, businesses and some residential apartments only a few blocks from Dealey Plaza, the landmark made famous by the Kennedy assassination.
The scene was chaotic, with officers with automatic rifles on the street corners.
"Everyone just started running," Devante Odom, 21, told The Dallas Morning News. "We lost touch with two of our friends just trying to get out of there."

Police check a car during the Dallas shooting. Photo / AP

Carlos Harris, who lives downtown, told the newspaper that the shooters "were strategic. It was tap, tap, pause. Tap, tap, pause," he said.
Brown said the suspects "triangulated" in the downtown area where the protesters were marching and had "some knowledge of the route" they would take.
Video posted on social media appeared to show a gunman at ground level exchanging fire with a police officer who was then felled.
Mayor Mike Rawlings said one of wounded officers had a bullet go through his leg as three members of his squad were fatally shot around him.
"He felt that people don't understand the danger of dealing with a protest," said Rawlings, who spoke to the surviving officer. "And that's what I learned from this. We care so much about people protesting, and I think it's their rights. But how we handle it can do a lot of things. One of the things it can do is put our police officers in harm's way, and we have to be very careful about doing that."
Few details about the slain officers were immediately available.
Four of the dead were with the Dallas Police Department, a spokesman said. One was a Dallas Area Rapid Transit officer. The agency said in a statement that 43-year-old officer Brent Thompson, a newlywed whose bride also works for the police force, was the first officer killed in the line of duty since the agency formed a police department in 1989.
"Our hearts are broken," the statement said.
Theresa Williams said one of the wounded civilians was her sister, 37-year-old Shetamia Taylor, who was shot in the right calf. She threw herself over her four sons, ages 12 to 17, when the shooting began.
Other protests across the US on Thursday were peaceful, including in New York, Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia. In Minnesota, where Castile was shot, hundreds of protesters marched in the rain from a vigil to the governor's official residence.
President Barack Obama said America is "horrified" by the shootings, which have no possible justification. He called them "vicious, calculated and despicable."
Speaking from Warsaw, Poland, where he was meeting with leaders of the European Union and attending a NATO summit, the president asked all Americans to pray for the fallen officers and their families.

Condemnation for slayings

Supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement condemned the slayings of police in Dallas but stressed that the shootings should not lessen concerns over the killings of black men and women by officers across the country.
"My heart goes out to the victims of all violence, when we think about what has happened over the past 48 hours," activist DeRay McKesson said during an appearance on C-SPAN.
Authorities say snipers killed five Dallas officers and injured seven others during a protest over fatal police shootings of black men this week in Louisiana and Minnesota.
The Black Lives Matter group called the Dallas attack "the result of the actions of a lone gunman".
"To assign the actions of one person to an entire movement is dangerous and irresponsible. We continue our efforts to bring about a better world for all of us," the group said in a statement.
Police officials have identified one suspect, whom they killed but say they're unsure how many people participated in the attack.
The shooting in Dallas came as protesters gathered in reaction to the deaths of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota.
Castile was shot Wednesday while in a car with a woman and a child. The aftermath of the shooting was livestreamed in a Facebook video that has been widely shared on social media and broadcast on TV newscasts. A day earlier, Alton Sterling was shot in Louisiana after being pinned to the pavement by two white officers. That, too, was captured on a cellphone video.
The Black Lives Matter movement traces its roots to the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012 and gained national ground after 18-year-old Michael Brown was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.
Since then, deaths of other unarmed black males at the hands of law enforcement officers have inspired protests under the Black Lives Matter moniker.
"The movement is bigger than any one person or organisation," McKesson said.
"There are so many incredible activists and organisers pushing to make the world more equitable and just."
The Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network appeared to strike a critical tone of the movement in a Friday morning media statement that said Sharpton "reaffirms his commitment that the movement must continue but that it must be anti-police misconduct, not anti-police."
The group rejected the notion that Black Lives Matter is against police.
"This is a tragedy - both for those who have been impacted by yesterday's attack and for our democracy," the group said in a statement.
"There are some who would use these events to stifle a movement for change and quicken the demise of a vibrant discourse on the human rights of Black Americans. We should reject all of this."
The statement echoes comments from supporters who took to Twitter in the overnight hours to defend the movement."#BlackLivesMatter advocates dignity, justice and freedom, not the murder of cops," wrote Malkia A. Cyril, director of the Center for Media Justice.
"Anyone blaming this Dallas shooting on the #BlackLivesMatter movement is sick," tweeted New York Daily News columnist Shaun King.
"Those protestors were peaceful. This terrorised them too."