The American public seems to wake up every morning to another grainy cellphone video of the police shooting and killing African Americans. Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were the two most recent. The killings sparked public outrage in the form of marches and demonstrations.
Thursday night, during a protest in Dallas, that outrage turned into violence.
A suspected “lone gunman” opened fire from the roof of a building killing 5 officers and injuring seven others.
Rev. Jeff Hood, one of the organizers of the protest was present when the shots rained down from the building. He saw officers running towards the gunfire.
“I ran the opposite direction. I was concerned about the 700 or 800 people behind me,” said Hood. “I was screaming ‘Run! Run! Active shooter! Run!’ And I was trying to get folks out as fast I could.”
Police and the shooter later clashed in a parking garage. The shooter who was later identified as Micah Xavier Johnson, a military veteran who had previously served in Afghanistan was killed when police detonated a bomb attached to the extension of a bomb disarming robot, killing him.
“We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was,” Police chief David Brown said. “Other options would have exposed our officers to grave danger. The suspect is deceased as a result of detonating the bomb.
Police initially thought that the there might have been two shooters firing from different locations. During the lengthy standoff with Johnson in the parking garage, Johnson expressed anger over the recent killings of African Americans at the hands of police officers to the police negotiators. Johnson also stated that he wanted to kill police officers. Specifically white police officers.
“This was a mobile shooter who had written manifestos on how to shoot and how to move, shoot and move, and that’s what he did,” Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings said. “As we’ve started to unravel the fishing knot, we’ve come to realize the shooting came from one building at different levels.”
Black Lives Matter activists and organizers of the protests have condemned the attacks on the police.
“We were interested in creating a space where anger could be let out. We were interested in creating a space where people could grieve… to face head on the problem of police brutality in our country,” Rev. Hood said. “Never in our wildest dreams would we have imagined that five police officers would be dead this morning.”
“We organized a peaceful protest,” said Hood. “It turned into a nightmare.”
The five officers have been identified as Lorne Ahrens a 14-year veteran, Michal Smith a 27-year veteran, Michael Krol, Patrick Zamarippa and DART Police officer Brent Thompson.
The police currently have three other suspects in custody, although it has not been said that they were shooting also.
“I’m not going to be satisfied until we turn every stone,” Brown said. “if there’s someone out there who’s associated with this, we will find you, we will prosecute you, and we will bring you to justice.”
