Deadliest day for police since 9/11 as five officers killed in Dallas

The Washington Post · Tim Madigan, Michael E. Miller, Travis M. Andrews, Mark Berman · 

DALLAS – Five Dallas police officers were killed and seven others wounded Thursday night when sniper fire turned a peaceful protest over recent police shootings into a scene of chaos and terror.

The gunfire was followed by a standoff that lasted for hours with a suspect who the Dallas police chief said had told authorities “he was upset about the recent police shootings” and “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.” He was killed when police detonated a bomb robot.

After the bloodshed – the deadliest single day for law enforcement officers since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks – authorities said the gunman, who said he targeted white officers, was killed, three potential suspects were in custody and police were still trying to investigate who may have been involved in the attack.

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“We are heartbroken,” Dallas Police Chief David Brown said during a news conference Friday. “There are no words to describe the atrocity that occurred to our city.”

The eruption of violence at around 9 p.m. occurred during a calm protest over recent police shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana, with similar demonstrations occurring in cities across the country. As a barrage of gunfire ripped through the air, demonstrators and police officers alike scrambled. Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings told CBS News that in addition to the dozen officers shot, two other people also wounded by gunfire, though their conditions were not immediately known.

Police have not officially released the identity of the attacker who said he was upset by police shootings, but a senior U.S. law enforcement official familiar with the probe identified him as Micah Xavier Johnson, 25, who is believed to be from the Dallas area. Johnson did not appear to have any ties to international terrorism, the official said.

According to U.S. Army records, Johnson appears to be in the Individual Ready Reserve component of the military.

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There are no immediate indications the attack was related to terrorism, international or domestic, according to a second federal law enforcement official, who asked not to be identified discussing an ongoing probe.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Friday that federal officials were on the scene and working with local law enforcement to help investigate the attack.

“This has been a week of profound grief and heartbreak and loss,” Lynch said during remarks Friday. Noting that the attack in Dallas happened during a protest sparked by police shootings, she added: “After the events of this week, Americans across our country are feeling a sense of helplessness, uncertainty and fear . . . but the answer must not be violence.”

The slain police included four Dallas police officers and one Dallas Area Rapid Transit officer. While police said they were killed by “snipers” perched atop “elevated positions” and initially said there were two snipers, it was unclear Friday how many attackers were involved.

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For hours after the assault, police say they spent hours in a standoff with Johnson after he was cornered on the second floor of a building downtown. Police exchanged gunfire with him and negotiated with him, but those discussions broke down, Brown said.

In those conversations, Brown said the suspect told police that “he was upset about Black Lives Matter” and angered by the police shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota that dominated national news this week after officers in both places fatally shot people. He also said he was not involved with any groups and acted alone.

“He said he was upset about the recent police shootings,” Brown said Friday. “The suspect said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”

During the standoff, Johnson also told authorities that “the end is coming” and spoke about bombs being placed downtown, though no explosives had been found by Friday.

Ultimately, Brown said police had no other option but to place an explosive device on their bomb robot and send it to the suspect, who was killed when the bomb detonated.

By Friday morning, names of the dead officers began to emerge, beginning with Brent Thompson, a 43-year-old transit police officer and Patrick Zamarripa, a 32-year-old who served three tours in Iraq.

The Dallas transit agency identified three of its officers who were injured but are expected to survive.

“As you can imagine, our hearts are broken,” the agency said in a statement. “We are grateful to report the three other DART police officers shot during the protest are expected to recover from their injuries.”

These three officers were named as Omar Cannon, 44; Misty McBride, 32; and Jesus Retana, 39. Tela Strickland, McBride’s 14-year-old cousin, reacted with “shock” to news that her relative had been shot in the stomach and shoulder.

“I am so tired of seeing shootings in the news,” she told The Post. “When you see your own family in the news, it’s heart breaking.”

Even as people were still trying to hide or shelter in place after the gunfire, videos began to circulate on social media showing some of the bloodshed.

One video showed a person with an assault-style rifle shoot a police officer in the back at point-blank range. In the footage, a gunman is seen running up behind an officer moving behind a pillar and firing at his back. The officer is seen falling to the ground and it is unclear if they survived.

Brown had said during one briefing that he was not sure if there were more suspects at large. On Friday, Brown said he would not go into any detail on other suspects until authorities get further into their investigation.

“We’re not expanding on who and how many,” he said. “We’re going to keep these suspects guessing.”

At one point, Brown had said he believed four suspects were “working together with rifles triangulated at elevated positions at different points in the downtown area” where the march was taking place.

“Suspects like this just have to be right once . . . to snipe at officers from elevated position and ambush them from secret positions,” Brown said Friday. He added that despite the danger, officers “with no chance to protect themselves . . . put themselves in harms way to make sure citizens can get to safe place.”

Two possible suspects were seen climbing into a black Mercedes with a camouflage bag before speeding off, police said. They were apprehended in the Oak Cliff area, a suburb of Dallas. A third possible suspect, a woman, was taken into custody near the El Centro garage where the attacker who exchanged gunfire with police wound up.

He said it was unclear if any of the suspects were somehow connected to the protest, but added that detectives were investigating that possibility.

“All I know is this must stop, this divisiveness between our police and our citizens,” Brown said.

After the shooting in Dallas, police officers and agencies across the country offered their condolences and took steps to protect their officers. In Las Vegas, where two officers were gunned down in an ambush while eating lunch in 2014, officers were told to work in pairs after the shooting; officers in New York, where two officers were killed in an ambush that same year, were given similar directions about patrolling with partners.

The mass shooting in Dallas comes amid intense scrutiny of police officers and how they use deadly force, an issue that returned to prominence in the news this week after videos circulated of a fatal shooting in Baton Rouge, La., and the aftermath of another in Minnesota. On Tuesday morning, Alton Sterling was fatally shot by police in Baton Rouge; less than 48 hours later, Philando Castile was fatally shot by an officer in Minnesota.

President Barack Obama, who after arriving in Warsaw, Poland, discussed how troubling the events in Minnesota and Louisiana were, spoke about the Dallas attacks and said there was “no possible justification” for the shooting there.

“I believe I speak for every single American when I say we are horrified over these events,” Obama said.

He called on Americans to “profess our profound gratitude to the men and women in blue” and to remember the victims in particular.

“Today, our focus is on the victims and their families,” Obama said. “They are heartbroken. The entire city of Dallas is grieving. Police across America, a tight-knit family, feels this loss to their core.”

Stories of heroism emerged along with tales of horror. Several people said officers helped save them, including one man who said an officer pushed him out of the way as shooting began. Bystanders captured footage of cops dragging fallen comrades out of the line of fire. Cameras also captured police officers choking back tears for their fallen colleagues. One officer appeared to brace himself against his SUV as grief overcame him.

“So many stories of great courage,” Brown said.

Rawlings said it was “a heartbreaking morning” and called for unity.

“We as a city, we as a country, must come together and lock arms and heal the wounds we all feel,” he said.

As in other cities across the country, protesters gathered in downtown Dallas just before 7 p.m. for a march from Belo Garden Park to the Old Red Courthouse.

For nearly two hours, hundreds of demonstrators had marched through Dallas, at one point passing near a memorial plaza marking President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination in the city.

Stanley Brown, 19, was downtown near El Centro when the shooting began.

“You could hear the bullets whizzing by our car and hitting the buildings. A bullet missed our car by six feet,” he said. “We pulled into a garage and got out of our car and the bullets started hitting the walls of the garage.”

Brown ran around the corner of a building to take cover, only to see a gunman running up the street.

“He was ducking and dodging and when police approached he ducked into El Centro,” he said.

He saw a SWAT team rush the college building, enabling five people to escape.

“An officer looked back at us and yelled that it was a terrorist attack,” he said.

Lynn Mays said he was standing on Lamar Street when the shooting began.

“All of a sudden we started hearing gunshots out of nowhere,” he told the Dallas Morning News. “At first we couldn’t identify it because we weren’t expecting it, then we started hearing more, rapid fire. One police officer who was standing there pushed me out the way because it was coming our direction . . . next thing you know we heard ‘officer down.’ “

Undercover and uniformed police officers started running around the corner and “froze,” Mays said. “Police officers started shooting in one direction, and whoever was shooting started shooting back.

“And that’s where the war began.”

Miller, Andrews and Berman reported from Washington. Greg Jaffe contributed reporting from Warsaw. William Wan, Adam Goldman, Katie Mettler, Ben Guarino and Mary Hui contributed reporting from Washington.

Video: What we know so far

http://wapo.st/29nglZz

Social videos show Dallas shootings

http://wapo.st/29AP2Qb