http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-dallas-shooting-20160707-snap-htmlstory.html11 officers shot, 4 fatally during Dallas protest over police shootings
a protest over police shootings in downtown Dallas Thursday evening, police said.
Police cornered one of the suspects in a garage and were negotiating with him, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said.
He said authorities have reason to believe that the suspects had threatened to plant a bomb “in the downtown area,” and police have reached out to the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives “to do a very thorough search” of the 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,” Brown said.
Authorities released a photo of a “person of interest” wearing camouflage and carrying a rifle.
“An intensive search for suspects is currently underway,” Brown said in an earlier statement.
Police said that two officers were in surgery and three were in critical condition.
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.
An agency spokesman said the officers did not appear to be together when they were shot.
A police department spokeswoman emailed a message to reporters asking them to “please be patient while we sort through all of this information as this is clearly still an active scene.”
Video shot by a Facebook user appeared to show officers ducking for cover as shots rang out.
A Dallas Morning News photographer tweeted footage that showed police ducking behind cars and an officer running with a rifle.
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This is a little bit cleaner clip. Shots fired at the #blacklivesmatter protest.
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#BREAKING: Our cameras captured several shots ring out during a protest in Downtown Dallas
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Hundreds of demonstrators had turned out earlier in the evening for a protest at Belo Gardens and a march to Main Street Gardens, according to the Dallas Morning News.
The Dallas shootings were not the only place where protests led to trouble. In Portland, where protesters gathered downtown outside the county justice center, police tweeted that they arrested a man who was “displaying a gun during a demonstration,” though no shots were fired.
Tweets from a reporter for CBS affiliate KOIN News said that "everyone ran screaming" from the area, and a video quoted the man purported to have the gun saying he had pulled it out because he had "feared for my life" in the crowd.
The reporter said the man was quickly and "aggressively taken down by police."
Times staff writer Matt Hamilton contributed to this story.
UPDATES:
9:32 p.m.: This story was updated with new information from police and reports of disturbances in Portland.
9:13 p.m.: This story was updated with additional details on the shooting.
8:41 p.m.: This story was updated with additional details on the number of officers shot.
This story was originally published at 8:29 p.m.
Copyright © 2016, Los Angeles Times
