The heavily armed sniper who gunned down police officers in downtown Dallas, leaving five of them dead, specifically set out to kill as many white officers as he could, officials said Friday. He was a military veteran who had served in Afghanistan, and he kept an arsenal in his home that included bomb-making materials.
The gunman turned a demonstration against fatal police shootings this week of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana from a peaceful march focused on violence committed by officers into a scene of chaos and bloodshed aimed against them.
The shooting was the kind of retaliatory violence that people have feared through two years of protests around the country against deaths in police custody, forcing yet another wrenching shift
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RACE IN AMERICA By YOUSUR AL-HLOU and JOHN WOO 3:03
How the Dallas Shooting Unfolded
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How the Dallas Shooting Unfolded
The attack was the deadliest against law enforcement officers in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. By YOUSUR AL-HLOU and JOHN WOO on Publish Date July 8, 2016. Photo by William Widmer for The New York Times. Watch in Times Video » Embed
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Three other people were arrested in connection with the shooting, but the police would not name them or say why they were being held.
In addition to the five officers who died, seven officers and two civilians were wounded. The Police Department said that 12 officers had returned fire during a wild series of gun battles that stretched for blocks.
After the shooting subsided, Mr. Johnson, wielding an assault rifle and a handgun, held the police off for hours in a parking garage, claiming — apparently falsely — to have planted explosives in the area, and threatening to kill more officers. In the end, the police killed him Friday morning with an explosive delivered by a remote-controlled robot, the Dallas police chief, David O. Brown,