By USA Today: Greg Toppo and Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY
MULTIPLE snipers shot 11 police officers from a building during a protest against police brutality, killing five, Dallas Police said Thursday night.
Dallas Police Chief David O. Brown earlier said two officers were in surgery and three were in critical condition.
Brown initially said 10 officers were shot, but a short time later said an 11th officer had been shot in an exchange of gunfire with one of the suspects. The officers include Dallas Police and Dallas Area Rapid Transit officers. Those shot were taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital and Baylor University Medical Center.
Update: pic.twitter.com/qBJe3q0EtN
— Dallas Police Depart (@DallasPD) July 8, 2016
Talking to reporters late Thursday, Brown said police were circulating a photo of a "person of interest" in the case who appeared to be openly carrying a rifle during the march. That person turned himself in, according to a later tweet by the department.
READ MORE: Beyonce halts Glasgow show to pay tribute to black police shooting victims
Another person was taken into custody after a shootout. The bomb squad was checking out a suspicious package discovered after the shootout, police said.
Brown said Dallas police had contacted the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives “to help us search for both these suspects — or maybe it’s more — and to do a very thorough search of this area where we believe there might be a bomb planted.”
Dallas Area Rapid Transit tweeted that four of its officers were among those shot and that one of them had died. The three others had non-life-threatening injuries.
One police officer was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same hospital wherePresident John F. Kennedy was pronounced dead after being shot Nov. 22, 1963, WFAA reported. A hospital representative referred questions to Dallas Police.
Live video feeds from news organizations and reports from witnesses painted a picture of a chaotic scene, with police cars converging on a downtown building.
Marchers protesting police shootings were moving down Lamar Street near Griffin when shots were fired.
One witness told The Dallas Morning News that he heard "what sounded like six to eight shots."
A bystander who was at the scene told WFAA the shooter stood by as the rally passed him, then opened fire on officers.
Another bystander, Richard Adams, said the protest was "a lovely, peaceful march," until they were walking down Commerce Street near the Bank of America building parking garage when he heard what sounded like "a bunch of firecrackers going off."
I am so scared. pic.twitter.com/jw88QnKGXG
— Allison (@allisongriz) July 8, 2016
"Everybody just stopped — 'Run, run for your lives!' Women with children and babies and everybody was chaotically running. And then, maybe I was a half-a-block away, calming down a little bit when we heard it again. [...] There must have been five times tonight — whenever we thought we were safe, people said 'Run, people were shot!'"
According to the Dallas police scanner, officers were looking for a light-skinned black male armed with AR-15 type rifle. He was described as wearing black shorts and a camouflage shirt. Dallas Police tweeted a photo of the suspect, asking for the public's help in locating him.
Before shots rang out, the Dallas Police Department was live-tweeting the protest, even posting photos of officers posing with demonstrators.
The shooting took place near El Centro College. Friday classes have been canceled.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article