Five law enforcement officers were killed and six officers and one civilian wounded when snipers opened gunfire on police at a Dallas protest, according to the Dallas Morning News. The demonstration was organized in the wake of the police killings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rogue, Louisiana, and Philandro Castile in Minneapolis.
Mark Hughes was questioned and released after turning himself in to police. Dallas officials have yet to explain what led them to label Hughes a suspect and release an image of him in an army fatigue T-shirt smiling as he walked alongside other protesters.
“[My brother] never thought that by exercising his right, he’d be plastered over the national media as a suspect,” Cory Hughes said.
Dallas Police Chief David O. Brown theorized that four suspects coordinated the attack by positioning themselves with rifles around the area where the protest was being held.
Three people remain in custody and a fourth who claimed to have bombs was engaged in a shootout with police inside a garage in downtown Dallas at El Centro, a community college.
“He has told our negotiators that the end is coming and he’s going to hurt and kill more of us — meaning law enforcement — and that there are bombs all over the place in this garage and in downtown,” Brown said at a press conference held around midnight.
Around 1 a.m. there was an explosion at El Centro Garage where one shooter had been located.
President Barack Obama called the killings of Sterling and Castile “an American problem,” in an address made shortly after he arrived in Warsaw to attend a NATO summit meeting. The White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said: “The president has been updated on the shooting of police officers in Dallas. He asked his team to keep him updated on the situation as they get additional information.”
