DALLAS (Reuters) - At least one sniper in Dallas killed five police officers and wounded seven more in a coordinated attack that ended when police used a bomb to kill a shooter who told them he wanted to kill white officers, authorities said Friday.
The attack came during one of several protests across the United States against the killing of two black men by police this week, the latest in a long string of killings that gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Police described Thursday night's ambush as carefully planned and executed and said they had taken three people into custody before killing the fourth after a long standoff in a downtown garage.
"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 City Hall.
"The suspect said he was upset about Black Lives Matter," said Brown, who is black. "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 attack came in a week that two black men were fatally shot by police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and outside Minneapolis. The killings, both now the subject of official investigations, inflamed tensions about race and justice in the United States.
The shots rang out as a protest in Dallas was winding down, sending marchers screaming and running in panic through the city's streets.
It was the deadliest day for police in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
A total of 12 police officers and two civilians were shot during the attack, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said. Three of the officers who were shot were women, he said.
Rawlings told CBS News the people in custody, including one woman, were "not being cooperative" with police investigators. He said the assailant who was dead was being fingerprinted and his identity checked with federal authorities.
Police were still not certain they knew all of the individuals involved in the attack, Rawlings said.
There was no sign of international links to the attacks, U.S. officials said on Friday.
President Obama Reacts
WARSAW (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday he had spoken with Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings to extend his condolences and offer support after snipers killed five police officers and wounded six more in a coordinated attack in the city.
Obama said he told Rawlings that the federal government would provide the city with any assistance it may need as it deals with this "tremendous tragedy".
"We still don't know all the facts, what we do know is there has been a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement," Obama after a meeting with European Union leaders ahead of a NATO summit in Poland.
"We also know when people are armed with powerful weapons unfortunately it makes attacks like these more deadly and more tragic. In the days ahead we are going to have to consider those realities as well."
Obama said his team is keeping him updated on the investigation and that he would have more to say as more details about the attack are learned.
(Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Alison Williams)
One of the dead officers was identified as Brent Thompson, 43. He was the first officer killed in the line of duty since Dallas Area Rapid Transit formed a police department in 1989, DART said on its website. Thompson joined DART in 2009.
Earlier, Brown said the shooters, some in elevated positions, used rifles to fire at the officers in what appeared to be a coordinated attack.
"(They were) working together with rifles, triangulating at elevated positions in different points in the downtown area where the march ended up going," Brown told a news conference, adding a civilian was also wounded.
A video taken by a witness shows a man with a rifle crouching at ground level and shooting a person who appeared to be wearing a uniform at close range. That person then collapsed to the ground.
Reuters could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the video.
''Despicable Attack'
President Barack Obama, who was traveling in Poland, expressed his "deepest condolences" to Rawlings on behalf of the American people.
"I believe I speak for every single American when I say that we are horrified over these events and we are united with the people and police department in Dallas," he said.
Obama said the FBI was in contact with Dallas police and that the federal government would provide assistance.
"We still don't know all of the facts. What we do know is that there has been a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement," he said.
The shooting, which erupted shortly before 9 p.m. CDT (0100 GMT), occurred near a busy area of downtown Dallas filled with restaurants, hotels and government buildings.
Mayor Rawlings advised people to stay away on Friday morning as police combed the area. Transportation was halted and federal authorities stopped commercial air traffic over the area as police helicopters hovered.
The Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area is one of the nation's most populous and is home to more than 7 million people.
The Dallas shooting happened as otherwise largely peaceful protests unfolded around the United States after the police shooting of Philando Castile, a 32-year-old black man, on Wednesday during a traffic stop near St. Paul, Minnesota.
The day earlier, police in Baton Rouge shot dead another black man, Alton Sterling, 37, while responding to a call alleging he had threatened someone with a gun.
Over the last two years, there have been periodic and sometimes violent protests over the use of police force against African-Americans in cities from Ferguson, Missouri, to Baltimore and New York. Anger has intensified when the officers were acquitted in trials or not charged at all.
'The End is Coming'
The suspect in the Dallas standoff had told police "the end is coming" and that more police were going to be hurt and killed. Police chief Brown said the suspect also told police "there are bombs all over the place in this garage and downtown".
Police said they were questioning two occupants of a Mercedes they had pulled over after the vehicle sped off on a downtown street with a man who threw a camouflaged bag inside the back of the car. A woman was also taken into custody near the garage where the standoff was taking place.
"We are leaving every motive on the table on why this happened and how this happened," Brown said.
Mayor Rawlings visited the wounded at Parkland hospital, the same hospital where President John F. Kennedy was taken after he was shot in Dallas in November 1963.
Outside the hospital, officers stood in formation and saluted as bodies of the officers were about to be transported.
(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Eric M. Johnson in Seattle, Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, Letitia Stein in Tampa, Florida and Laila Kearney in New York; Writing by Scott Malone and Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Alison Williams and Jeffrey Benkoe)
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Original story thread:
DALLAS (Reuters) - Three Dallas police officers were killed by snipers on Thursday as protests were being held in the downtown area over the fatal police shootings of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana this week, the police chief said.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown said in a statement two snipers shot 10 officers, three of whom were killed. Two officers were in surgery, one in critical condition. No suspects in custody.
"An intensive search for suspects is currently underway," Brown said.
Officials also said four Dallas transit officers were shot but their condition was unknown.
(Reporting by Lisa Maria Garza in Dallas; Writing by Eric M. Johnson; Editing by Paul Tait)
Photo credit: A protester is detained by NYPD officers as people take part in a protest against the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile during a march through Manhattan in New York July 7, 2016. REUTERS/Darren Ornitz
Update 11:14 p.m.
NBC 5 is reporting that a fourth police officer has died. (Watch the story unfold here.)
Update 12:07
By Lisa Maria Garza
DALLAS (Reuters) - Four police officers were fatally shot and seven wounded in one of the worst shootings of police in recent U.S. history, by snipers who targeted them during rallies in Dallas to protest against the fatal shooting of two black men by police this week.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown told a news conference that two snipers in elevated positions shot 11 officers, killing three, in what appeared to be a coordinated attack. A fourth officer died, police said later on Twitter. At least one more was in surgery. Some of the victims were shot in the back.
Police said one suspect whom they had engaged in a shootout had been arrested and a bomb squad unit was investigating a suspicious package found near the suspect's location.
A second "person of interest" had turned himself in, they added, though there was no word on the arrest of a possible second sniper.
"Our worst nightmare has happened," Mike Rawlings, mayor of the Texas city, told a news conference. "It is a heartbreaking moment for the city of Dallas."
Television footage showed a heavy police presence, with officers taking cover behind vehicles on the street.
The shooting happened as largely peaceful protests unfolded around the United States after the shooting of Philando Castile, 32, by police near St. Paul, Minnesota, late on Wednesday. His girlfriend posted live video on the internet of the bloody scene minutes afterward, which was widely viewed.
Castile's death occurred within a day of the shooting of Alton Sterling, 37, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Sterling was killed during an altercation with two white police officers. Graphic video of that incident caused an outcry on social media.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the Dallas law enforcement community and the Dallas Area Rapid Transit officers killed and injured this evening," Governor Greg Abbott said in a statement.
In Chicago, protesters shut down a stretch of the Dan Ryan Expressway - one of Chicago's main arteries - for about 10 minutes on Thursday.
In New York, several hundred protesters blocked traffic in Times Square in the heart of Manhattan, chanting "Hands up, don't shoot." More than a dozen arrests were made, the New York Police Department said.
In St. Paul, about a thousand people gathered outside the governor's mansion, chanting "Hey hey, ho ho, those killer cops have got to go," and other slogans.
Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton made a brief appearance in an attempt to quell the crowd. He said earlier a state investigation was already under way.
"Would this have happened if the driver and the passengers were white? I don’t think it would have," Dayton told reporters, speaking of the Castile shooting.
"So I'm forced to confront that this kind of racism exists, and it's incumbent upon all of us to vow and ensure that it doesn't happen and doesn't continue to happen," he said.
State investigators later identified Minneapolis area police officer Jeronimo Yanez as the patrolman who fatally shot Castile during a traffic stop.
"RACIAL DISPARITIES" - OBAMA
U.S. President Barack Obama described the killings as tragedies.
"All of us as Americans should be troubled by these shootings, because these are not isolated incidents. They're symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system," he said after arriving in Poland for a NATO summit.
The use of force by police against African-Americans in cities from Ferguson, Missouri, to Baltimore and New York has sparked periodic and sometimes violent protests in the past two years and has spawned the Black Lives Matter movement.
Anger has intensified when the officers involved in such incidents have been acquitted in trials or not charged at all.
"I was already fuming when I woke up this morning over Baton Rouge, but for it to happen here again just pushed me right over the edge," said truck driver Thomas Michaels, 42, who was among the protesters in St. Paul.
"We live in a racist society where black lives don't matter, my kids lives don't matter and I'm sick of it. I don't even know if it can be fixed," he said.
Another protester, retail worker Tanya McDonald, 28, said: "What gets me is how many people are failing to see that this is happening almost every day. We're dying, we're being killed off by people hiding behind a badge and no one's doing anything to stop it."
The Washington Post said Castile was at least the 506th person and 123rd black American shot and killed by police so far in 2016, according to a database it has set up to track such deaths.
(Addiitonal reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Paul Tait and Clarence Fernandez)
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