3A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JULY 8, 2016
Dallas oficers slain,
deadliest day for police since 9/11
Three suspects
in custody,
fourth killed by
robot-sent bomb
By TERRY WALLACE
Associated Press
DALLAS — Five Dal-
las police oficers were fatally
shot and seven others wounded
during a protest over the deaths
of black men killed by police
this week in Louisiana and Min-
nesota — the deadliest day for
U.S. law enforcement since the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Police Chief David Brown
blamed “snipers,” but it was
unclear how many shooters
were involved in Thursday’s
attack. Authorities initially said
three suspects were in cus-
tody and a fourth dead, killed
by a robot-delivered bomb in
a parking garage where he had
exchanged ire with oficers.
Hours later, oficials were vague
and would not discuss details.
Before dying, the police
chief said, the suspect told ofi-
cers he was upset about recent
shootings and wanted to kill
whites, “especially white ofi-
cers.” The man also stated that
he acted alone and was not afil-
iated with any groups, Brown
said.
Law enforcement oficials
did not immediately disclose the
race of the suspect or the dead
oficers.
AP Photo/Reid Blackburn
FBI agents scour the sand of a beach on the Columbia
River in February 1980, searching for additional money
or clues in the D.B. Cooper skyjacking case, in Van-
couver, Wash. Several thousand dollars of the hijack-
ing money was found in the area days earlier.
Mark Mulligan/Houston Chronicle
People wait to return to their cars early as police investigate the scene of Thursday’s
shooting, on Friday, in Dallas. Snipers opened fire on police officers in the heart of Dal-
las Thursday night, during protests over two recent fatal police shootings of black men.
Mark Mulligan/Houston Chronicle
Peaceful protest
The bloodshed, which
unfolded just a few blocks
from where President John F.
Kennedy was slain in 1963,
also evoked the trauma of the
nation’s tumultuous civil rights
era.
The shooting began about
8:45 p.m. Thursday while hun-
dreds of people were gathered
to protest the killings in Baton
Rouge, Louisiana, and subur-
ban St. Paul, Minnesota. Brown
told reporters that snipers ired
“ambush-style” on the ofi-
cers. Two civilians also were
wounded.
Authorities said they were
not sure they had located all pos-
sible suspects, but attention on
Friday quickly turned to the man
killed in the parking garage.
Police resorted to the bomb
after hours of negotiations
failed, Brown said. The suspect
said he was not afiliated with
any groups and stated that he
acted alone, Brown added.
A Texas law enforcement
oficial identiied the slain sus-
pect as Micah Johnson, 25.
The oficial spoke on the
condition of anonymity because
he said he was not authorized to
release the information. There
were no immediate details on
the suspect’s middle name or
hometown.
By midday, investigators
were seen walking in and out
of a home believed to be John-
son’s in the Dallas suburb of
Mesquite.
None of the suspects was
identiied, and the police chief
said he would not disclose any
details about them until authori-
ties were sure everyone involved
was in custody.
Brown said it appeared the
shooters “planned to injure and
kill as many oficers as they
could.”
Video from the scene
showed protesters marching
along a downtown street about
half a mile from City Hall when
shots erupted and the crowd
scattered, seeking cover. Ofi-
cers crouched beside vehicles,
armored SWAT team vehicles
arrived and a helicopter hovered
overhead.
Police block streets in downtown Dallas early as law en-
forcement investigate the scene of Thursday’s fatal shoot-
ing, Friday.
occurred in an area of hotels,
restaurants, businesses and some
residential apartments only a
few blocks from Dealey Plaza,
the landmark made famous by
the Kennedy assassination.
Chaos
The scene was chaotic, with
oficers with automatic riles on
the street corners.
“Everyone just started run-
ning,” Devante Odom, 21, told
The Dallas Morning News.
“We lost touch with two of our
friends just trying to get out of
there.”
Carlos Harris, who lives
downtown, told the newspaper
that the shooters “were strategic.
It was tap, tap, pause. Tap, tap,
pause,” he said.
Brown said the suspects
“triangulated” in the down-
town area where the protesters
were marching and had “some
knowledge of the route” they
would take.
Video posted on social
media appeared to show a gun-
man at ground level exchang-
ing ire with a police oficer who
was then felled.
Mayor Mike Rawlings said
one of wounded oficers had a
bullet go through his leg as three
members of his squad were
fatally shot around him.
“He felt that people don’t
understand the danger of deal-
ing with a protest,” said Raw-
lings, who spoke to the surviv-
ing oficer. “And that’s what I
learned from this. We care so
much about people protesting,
and I think it’s their rights. But
how we handle it can do a lot of
things. One of the things it can
do is put our police oficers in
harm’s way, and we have to be
very careful about doing that.”
Fallen oficers
Early Friday, dozens of ofi-
cers illed the corridor of the
emergency room at Baylor
Medical Center, where other
wounded oficers were taken.
The mayor and police chief
were seen arriving there.
Few details about the slain
oficers were immediately
available.
Four of the dead were with
the Dallas Police Department, a
spokesman said. One was a Dal-
las Area Rapid Transit oficer.
The agency said in a statement
that 43-year-old oficer Brent
The Daily Astorian
It is one of the most fas-
cinating unsolved crimes of
modern times, not to mention
one of the greatest myster-
ies of the Paciic Northwest:
Who was “D.B. Cooper”?
On Nov. 24, 1971, a man
with that pseudonym sky-
jacked a commercial air-
plane heading from Portland
to Seattle using a briefcase
bomb, extorted $200,000
and several parachutes after
the plane landed and the pas-
sengers left, demanded the
crew ly him to Mexico, then
parachuted out somewhere
near the Oregon-Washington
border.
Dressed like a character
from “Reservoir Dogs,” the
unidentiied man — wear-
ing a suit, tie and sunglasses,
and smoking a cigarette —
became an instant and endur-
ing source of speculation.
Hundreds of possible sub-
jects have been eliminated
over the years.
Now comes “D.B. Coo-
per: Case Closed?,” a two-
part History Channel doc-
umentary premiering next
week that investigates some
of the more promising “Coo-
per” suspects.
And one of them — a
man with North Coast con-
nections — may be the real
Cooper, according to a pair
AP Photo/Eric Risberg
Part of the money that was
paid to legendary hijack-
er D.B. Cooper in 1971 is
shown during an F.B.I.
news conference, Feb.
12, 1980, where it was an-
nounced that several thou-
sand dollars was found.
of investigative journalists
who spent ive years secretly
digging into the case.
The program takes viewers
into the journalists’ 40-mem-
ber “cold case” team — the
irst D.B. Cooper investigation
enlisting former feds, a dozen
of whom are FBI.
Is Cooper still alive?
How could a man who did
something so sensational
ly beneath the radar (so to
speak) for 45 years?
“D.B. Cooper: Case
Closed?” claims to answer
these and other tantalizing
questions.
Part one airs 9 p.m. Sun-
day on the History Channel;
Part 2 will air Monday.
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Across the nation
Demonstrations were held in
several other U.S. cities Thurs-
day night to protest the police
killings of two more black men:
A Minnesota oficer on Wednes-
day fatally shot Philando Cas-
tile while he was in a car with
a woman and a child, and the
shooting’s aftermath was lives-
treamed in a widely shared
Facebook video. A day earlier,
Alton Sterling was shot in Lou-
isiana after being pinned to the
pavement by two white ofi-
cers. That, too, was captured on
a cellphone video.
The
Dallas
shootings
Thompson, a newlywed whose
bride also works for the police
force, was the irst oficer killed
in the line of duty since the
agency formed a police depart-
ment in 1989.
“Our hearts are broken,” the
statement said.
Theresa Williams said one
of the wounded civilians was
her sister, 37-year-old Shetamia
Taylor, who was shot in the right
calf. She threw herself over her
four sons, ages 12 to 17, when
the shooting began.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott
directed the Texas Department
of Public Safety to offer “what-
ever assistance the City of Dal-
las needs.”
“In times like this, we must
remember — and emphasize
— the importance of uniting as
Americans,” Abbott said.
Other protests across the
U.S. on Thursday were peace-
ful, including in New York,
Atlanta, Chicago and Philadel-
phia. In Minnesota, where Cas-
tile was shot, hundreds of pro-
testers marched in the rain from
a vigil to the governor’s oficial
residence.
President Barack Obama
said America is “horriied” by
the shootings, which have no
possible justiication. He called
them “vicious, calculated and
despicable.”
Speaking from Warsaw,
Poland, where he was meeting
with leaders of the European
Union and attending a NATO
summit, the president asked all
Americans to pray for the fallen
oficers and their families.
‘D.B. Cooper:
Case Closed?’
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