A decorated US ex-marine sergeant on Sunday opened fire on police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, killing three officers, nearly two weeks after the fatal police shooting of a black man there sparked nationwide protests, one of them shattered by the massacre of five Dallas policemen.
The Baton Rouge suspect, dressed in black and armed with a rifle, was shot dead minutes later in a gunfight with police, who converged on the scene of a confrontation that Baton Rouge Mayor Kip Holden said began as an “ambush-style” attack on officers.
Two Baton Rouge Police Department officers and one sheriff’s deputy were killed, and one sheriff’s deputy was critically wounded. Another police officer and one other deputy suffered less severe wounds and were expected to survive.
Photo: Reuters
Louisiana State Police Superintendent Colonel Mike Edmonson told a news conference the gunman was believed to have acted alone, contrary to earlier reports that police might have been looking for other shooters.
Sunday’s bloodshed followed days of unrest over the police killings of two black men under questionable circumstances earlier this month — Alton Sterling, 37, in Baton Rouge on July 5 and Philando Castile, 32, near St Paul, Minnesota, on July 6.
Police did not name the suspect, but a US government official said the gunman was identified as Gavin Long of Kansas City, Missouri.
Long, who was black, was reported by other media to be 29 years old.
According to Long’s military record, released by the Pentagon, he served in the marines from August 2005 to August 2010, achieving the rank of sergeant.
Listed as a data network specialist, he was deployed to Iraq from June 2008 until January 2009, earning several medals and commendations.
Authorities declined to offer a possible motive for Sunday’s attack in Louisiana’s capital, a city with a long history of distrust between African-Americans and law enforcement that was further inflamed by Sterling’s death.
Social media postings linked to an individual named Gavin Long and a Kansas City address, which was cordoned off by police on Sunday.
The links also included a YouTube video posted by Long on July 10, in which he said he was fed up with mistreatment of blacks and suggested that only violence and financial pressure would bring about change.
Long said he was speaking from Dallas, where he had gone to join protests.
“It’s only fighting back or money. That’s all they care about,” he said in the video. “Revenue and blood, revenue and blood, revenue and blood.”
In a separate video, he insisted that, should “anything happen” to him, he wanted his viewers to know he was “not affiliated” with any particular movement or group.
“I’m affiliated with the spirit of justice, nothing more, nothing less,” he said. “I thought my own thoughts, I made my own decisions.”
A second government source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators had reason to believe an emergency 911 call might have been used to lure Baton Rouge police into harm’s way.
Edmonson said several officers came under fire as police were responding to a report of a man dressed in black standing behind a store holding a rifle shortly before 9am.
In the ensuing pandemonium caught on a recording of emergency radio traffic, police are repeatedly heard reporting: “Officer down” and “deputy down” as officers swarmed the area searching for, and ultimately confronting, the gunman.
The episode was over in about eight minutes, according to Edmonson’s account.
At least one of the three officers killed was known to be black.
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
RSS