Five police officers killed in Dallas shooting; suspected attacker was Army veteran

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 told authorities 'he was upset about the recent police shootings” and 'wanted to kill white people, especially white officers,” according to Dallas Police Chief David Brown. The gunman was killed when police detonated a bomb-equipped robot.

After the bloodshed - the deadliest single day for law enforcement officers since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks - authorities said three potential suspects were in custody, and police were investigating who may have been involved in the attack.

'We are heartbroken,” 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 were wounded by gunfire, though their conditions were not immediately known.

Police have not officially released the identity of the suspected 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.

Johnson deployed to Afghanistan with the U.S. Army from November 2013 through July 2014 and was in the Army Reserve from 2009 until last year. Army records show that Johnson, whose home was listed as Mesquite, Texas, had served with an engineering brigade before he was sent to Afghanistan. He did not have a combat job and was listed as a carpentry and masonry specialist.

There are no immediate indications that 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. 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 (DART) 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.

For hours after the assault, police were locked 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 black men. He also said he was not involved with any groups and acted alone, the police chief said.

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.

During remarks at a prayer vigil on Friday afternoon, Brown said that 'this was a well-planned, well-thought-out evil tragedy by these suspects,” adding: 'And we won't rest until we bring everyone involved to justice.”

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

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 was 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 heartbreaking.”

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. It is unclear if the officer 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 harm's way to make sure citizens can get to a 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 neighborhood 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.

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

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

After the shooting in Dallas, police officers and agencies across the country offered their condolences and took steps to protect their officers.

Police chiefs in Washington, Los Angeles County, Boston, Nassau County and St. Louis also had instructed their patrol officers to pair up, as did officials in Las Vegas, where two officers were gunned down in an ambush while eating lunch in 2014, and New York, where two officers were killed in another ambush that same year.

Terry Cunningham, the president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the chief of police in Wellesley, Mass., said Friday, that officers nationwide 'really are going to have to have vigilance. Any traffic stop, at any time, can be deadly. I don't know what this means. I don't know if this means more violence perpetrated toward law enforcement as a result of this.”

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 discussed how troubling the events in Minnesota and Louisiana were, spoke about the Dallas attack and said there was 'no possible justification” for the shooting in the city.

'I believe that I speak for every single American when I say that 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, and the entire city of Dallas is grieving. Police across America, which is a tight-knit family, feels this loss to their core.”

Officials across the country expressed their grief for those killed in Dallas.

'I mourn for the officers shot while doing their sacred duty to protect peaceful protesters, for their families [and] all who serve with them,” Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, wrote in a message on Twitter. Her likely Republican opponent, Donald Trump, called the shooting 'a coordinated, premeditated assault on the men and women who keep us safe.”