Louisiana man charged with killing two black men

Police forces in the US state of Louisiana have arrested a 23-year-old man suspected of killing two black men and opening fire on the home of a black family.

Baton Rouge police on Tuesday charged Kenneth James Gleason with attempted murder in the last week’s fatal shooting of a homeless African-American man and a dishwasher who was walking to work.

Police said that 59-year-old Bruce Cofield and 49-year-old Donald Smart had no prior relationship with the suspect and that Gleason had fired from his car then walked up to the victims as they were lying on the ground and shot them at close range multiple times.

Gleason was also connected to a third shooting in which he fired multiple times into the home of a black family in his neighborhood. Nobody was injured in that attack.

Describing the deaths as “brutal murders,” interim Police Chief Jonny Dunnam said during a news conference that, "I feel confident this killer probably would have killed again, and could have potentially created a tear in the fabric that holds this community together."

A law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said authorities had found a copy of an Adolf Hitler speech during a search of the suspect’s home over the weekend.

Asked whether police suspected that race was a motive for the shootings, Sergeant L’Jean McKneely said, “We’re not completely closed off to that. We’re looking at all possibilities at this time, so we’re not going to just pinpoint that.”

East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore said his office could seek the death penalty if the 23-year-old suspect was found guilty.

"It appears to be cold, calculated, planned (against) people who were unarmed and defenseless," he said. "We don't need to prove motive. There are a lot of things that are unanswered."

Investigators also found 9 grams of marijuana and vials of human growth hormone during the search of Gleason’s home, according to US media reports.

It is not the first time the Louisiana state capital has been rocked by racially charged shootings.

On July 5, African-American Alton Sterling was shot and killed after an altercation with Baton Rouge police officers. One day after Sterling’s death, Philando Castile was fatally shot by police in his car in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.

Those police killings triggered a revenge attack by a black US Army veteran who shot dead five white police officers in Dallas, Texas, during a protest against police brutality and racial profiling of African Americans.

The killings have renewed racial tensions that have flared repeatedly across the US since the 2014 police killing of unarmed black teen Michael Brown in Missouri.

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