Micah Johnson, the gunman who killed five police officers at a Dallas protest sparked by police shootings of black men was described as a "loner." Here's what you need to know about him. (Victoria Walker, Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post)
At first, peace.
Anger, not violence. Marching, not name-calling.
The protesters marched down Main Street. They turned south on Field. And the Dallas police proudly chronicled it all on Twitter — the “enough is enough” chants, the “Black Lives Matter” signs.
The evening was so harmonious that protesters posed for photos with officers, a moment of cooler heads prevailing on a sweltering Texas night after the consecutive fatal shootings of black men by police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota.
And then, mayhem.
As a gunman opened fire on police officers at a peaceful protest on July 7 in Dallas, eyewitnesses captured the chaos on video and social media platforms. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
“Shots fired, officer down,” an officer says into his radio about 9 p.m., his voice urgent. A few minutes later, another officer is panicked: “We’ve got a guy with a long rifle. We don’t know where the hell he’s at.”
What unfolded over the next several hours — 12 officers shot, a chaotic hunt for a gunman, a battle that echoed off office buildings and, finally, mercifully, a bomb explosion — turned the streets of downtown Dallas into an urban combat zone.
It was the most vicious, direct attack on U.S. law enforcement in decades.Five officers died. Seven more were wounded. And the nation was horrified.
This account of the ambush in Dallas is based on police communications, witness accounts and a review of cellphone videos taken by those brave, or brazen, enough to capture the horror. The images almost immediately began circulating on social media.
Officers lay in the streets, some mortally wounded. Protesters dropped for cover. Police unholstered their guns.
At first, as they dove behind cars, officers struggled to find where the bullets were coming from. Was there more than one shooter? The sharp rifle fire bouncing off tall buildings could have sounded like multiple shooters. Initial reports said officers were being ambushed by no less than three shooters.
But it was a one-man campaign, waged by ex-Army carpenter Micah Johnson — first in a street assault and then from multiple floors above his targets below. Dallas Mayor Michael S. Rawlings said Johnson “was a mobile shooter that had written manifestos on how to shoot and move, shoot and move, and he did that.”
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق