BATON ROUGE, La. — Three Baton Rouge law enforcement officers were killed and three others wounded Sunday, less than two weeks after a black man was shot and killed by police here in a confrontation that sparked nightly protests across the city that reverberated nationwide.
Police said the suspect was shot and killed at the scene. Authorities initially believed that two other assailants might be at large, but hours later said the dead gunman was the only person who fired at the officers.
However, a state police spokesman said investigators were unsure whether he had some kind of help from others.
“We are not ready to say he acted alone,” Major Doug Cain said. Two people were detained in the nearby town of Addis. Cain called them “persons of interests.”
The shooting — which took place just before 9 a.m., less than a mile from police headquarters — came amid escalating tensions across the country between the black community and police. The races of the suspect and the officers were not immediately known.
It was the fourth high-profile deadly encounter in the United States involving police over the past two weeks. The violence has left 12 people dead, including eight police officers, and sparked a national conversation over race and policing.
