THE DALLAS SHOOTER was plotting a major bomb attack, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said yesterday.
New details have emerged about the Dallas shooter, Micah Johnson, the 25-year-old US Army reservist and Afghanistan war veteran who died in the standoff with police.
Johnson opened fire on downtown Dallas on Thursday evening with a powerful rifle. Protests against the deaths of two black men, Alton Sterling and Philandon Castile, in Louisiana and Minnesota by police officers had been taking place.
Johnson shot 12 police officers, five fatally.
A search of Johnson’s Dallas-area home turned up bomb-making materials and a journal in which he wrote about military tactics and practice detonations.
Police now say he had been planning something big long before the shootings, and that last week’s deaths were a trigger.
Dallas police chief David Brown told CNN’s State of the Union that investigators believe:
The suspect had been practicing explosive detonations and… the materials were such that it was large enough to have devastating effects throughout our city and our North Texas area.
Johnson wrote the letters “RB” in his own blood on a wall of the community college where he was holed up after he wounded by police gunfire.
Brown said it was not immediately clear what those letters meant.
Johnson apparently supported black militant organisations, some classified as hate groups.
Standoff
Johnson toyed with police as he negotiated with them during a standoff. Brown said:
We had negotiated with him for about two hours. And he just basically lied to us, playing games, laughing at us, singing, asking how many did he get and that he wanted to kill some more.
Johnson insisted on speaking only to a black police officer when he began negotiating, Brown said.
Sharpshooters could not get a view of Johnson as he hid behind a brick wall. The shooter was killed using a police-controlled robot carrying a bomb.
“I’ll do it again if presented with the same circumstances,” Brown said.
Further protests
Largely peaceful protests have taken place in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco after the two deaths last week.
But authorities say a full-scale riot broke out in Saint Paul, Minnesota and resulted in 102 arrests. Protesters blocked a freeway and attacked police with rocks, bottles, fireworks, Molotov cocktails and metal bars.
Twenty-one officers were injured in the hours-long conflict. One was injured after a rioter dropped a 11-kilogram chunk of concrete on his head from a bridge or overpass, police spokesman Steve Linders said.
One of last week’s deaths occurred in a Saint Paul suburb.
In Baton Rouge, where the other death took place, one officer was injured and 102 protesters were arrested, Sheriff Sid Gautreaux said. Among them was activist leader DeRay McKesson, who livestreamed the incident. He was released on bond yesterday.
“The only people that were violent last night were the Baton Rouge police department,” McKesson told reporters outside the jailhouse. “The protesters remain peaceful both here and across the country.”
Additional reporting from Liz O’Malley.
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