Dallas sniper wanted to kill white police over black deaths
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.
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