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Micah Johnson, a black US Army veteran, began firing on police officers while hundreds of people were gathered in downtown Dallas to protest fatal police shootings. Authorities have said the 25-year-old kept a journal of combat tactics and had amassed a personal arsenal at his home that included bomb-making materials. “We’re convinced that this suspect had other plans, and thought that what he was doing was righteous and believed that he was going to target law enforcement — make us pay for what he sees as law enforcement’s efforts to punish people of color,” Dallas Police Chief David Brown told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.
The fact that Johnson had material for explosives and talked of using homemade bombs during a standoff with police before he was killed indicated he could have inflicted more damage with more time, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said. “If this had not been a crime of opportunity where the protest was quickly organized in response to events in the same week... he could have caused a lot more harm than he did,” Jenkins said. Five officers were fatally shot in the attacks, while at least nine officers and two civilians were wounded. Also on Sunday, Brown revealed new details about Johnson’s negotiations with police, saying that Johnson taunted authorities, laughing at them, singing, and at one point asked how many police officers he had shot.
Johnson, who served in the US Army Reserve for six years and did one tour in Afghanistan, insisted on speaking with a black negotiator, and wrote in blood on the wall of a parking garage where police cornered and later killed him, Brown said. The gunman wrote the letters “RB” and other markings, but the meaning was unclear. Investigators are trying to decipher the writing by looking through evidence from Johnson’s suburban Dallas home, Brown said. The writing suggested that Johnson was wounded in a shootout with police. An autopsy would confirm exactly how many times he was hit, Jenkins said.
Authorities do not “have any independent report from a police officer saying: ‘I think I hit him,’” Jenkins said. The police chief defended the decision to kill Johnson with a bomb delivered by a remote-controlled robot, saying negotiations went nowhere and that police officers could not approach him without putting themselves in danger. Brown said he became increasingly concerned that “at a split second, he would charge us and take out many more before we would kill him.” Federal agents are trying to trace the origin of the weapons used, including a military-style semi-automatic rifle.
Dallas gunman had plans for larger attack: officials - Taipei Times
Shetamia Taylor wanted her four sons to experience a peaceful march. That’s why she had brought them to downtown Dallas on Thursday to take part in the Black Lives Matter protest. They were headed to their car to beat the traffic back to their home in Garland and were about to cross the street near Belo Garden when the shooting began. First one shot, then a second. Wounded and falling to the ground, a tall, hefty, white police officer yelled: “He has a gun. Run!” The crowd scattered. In the pandemonium, Taylor told her sons to run ahead of her. The 38-year-old mother, one of two civilians injured in last week’s shooting, recounted the terror she and her sons felt at a tearful press conference at Baylor University Medical Center on Sunday.
She felt something tear through the back of her right calf and exit her shin. A bullet. Her son, Andrew, turned around to grab her. She tackled him. They lay between a parked car and the street curb. An officer jumped on mother and son. "There was another [officer] at our feet, and another over our head," she recalled. "Several of them lined against a wall and stayed there with us." She remembered mostly white officers protecting her and Andrew. More shots, and another officer fell. "I'd never been in a situation like that before," she said. "It was just hundreds of rounds. I've never heard anything like that before. It was just shots all around." As the shooting continued, Andrew, 15, lifted his head. Taylor pushed him back down. She didn't want him to see her bleeding.
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She watched her son, Kavion, 18, grab her 12-year-old, Jermar. The two brothers sought protection near the entryway of a parking garage. An officer yelled at Kavion: "Go! I'll cover you!" The boys followed the crowd toward Union Station. Taylor's fourth son, Jajuan, 14, had followed his mother's orders: To run. He became separated from his family. On the street, he sought the help of a stranger with her family. He asked her what to do. "Just get to safety," the woman said. "Can I come with you?" Jajuan asked. "I don't know Dallas." The woman's name was Angie Wisner. The Oak Cliff woman was with her cousin's wife and their three kids. They and Jajuan managed to stay at the apartment of a Good Samaritan, near Main and Field. There, Jajuan stayed until a cousin picked him up.
Shetamia Taylor, far right, tears up while describing the accounts of Thursday's attack that killed five police officers and wounded seven others, including herself, during a press conference at Baylor Scott & White Health Center in Dallas
Near Belo Garden, police officers put Taylor and Andrew into a police car riddled with bullets. The tires were flat, down to the rims. They sped toward Baylor. At the ER, Taylor saw a fallen officer being carried in on a gurney. "I kept praying for everybody," she recalled, "for my sons to be safe, for the officers to be safe." Kavion and Jermar found shelter at Union Station. They borrowed a phone and called their mother's cell phone. They reached Andrew, who told them their mother had been shot. Kavion tried to stay calm for the sake of his younger brother. At Union Station, the brothers heard that the gunman might be headed their way. Everyone moved quickly through a tunnel to the Hyatt Regency. The brothers stayed there for several hours. At Baylor, around 1 a.m. Friday morning, doctors and nurses prepared Taylor for surgery. Hours later, she was reunited with her four sons. It will take four to five months for her to recover from her injury.
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