11 officers shot, 4 fatally during Dallas protest over police shootings

[senona]

Details are still coming out...

Eleven police officers were shot, four of them fatally, when two snipers opened fire with rifles in downtown Dallas Thursday evening during a protest over recent police shootings in other states, police said.

One suspect was in a “shootout” with a Dallas SWAT team and was taken into custody, with a “suspicious package” found near where he was captured, Dallas police said. A bomb squad was sent to the scene.

Police said one female was in custody, while another was cornered in a garage and talking to police.

The suspect “told our negotiators that the end is coming, and he’s going to hurt and kill more of us,” Dallas Police Chief David Brown said.
Police throughout the evening were looking at a variety of “persons of interest.”

One man seen wearing camouflage and carrying a rifle, identified as a “person of interest” in a police photo disseminated to the public, quickly turned himself in, police said. A relative said the man was a protester, not one of the gunmen.

Meanwhile, another person was seen carrying a camouflage bag and walking quickly down Lamar Street, then throwing the bag into the back of a black Mercedes and driving off at a high rate of speed, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said.
Officers pulled the vehicle over and were questioning its two occupants.

Brown said authorities have reason to believe that the suspects had threatened to plant a bomb “in the downtown area.”

“We believe that these suspects were positioning themselves in a way to triangulate on these officers from two different perches and garages in the downtown area and planned to injure and kill as many law enforcement officers as they could,” the chief said.

News Source

An eyewitness video aired on KDFW-TV appears to show a gunman outflanking and shooting a police officer.

The footage shows a man with a rifle standing on the sidewalk, hiding behind a pillar. As another person, apparently a police officer, approaches from behind and hides behind a separate pillar, the gunman turns around and runs toward the officer's pillar, then apparently shoots the officer in the back at close range.

The officer falls to the ground. 

At least four of the officers  belonged to the Dallas Area Rapid Transit agency, including one of those who died, according to the agency’s Twitter account.