DALLAS—The black Army veteran who killed five Dallas police officers donned a protective vest and used a military-style semi-automatic rifle in the sniper slayings, officials said, an attack that layered new anxiety onto a nation already divided about guns and how police treat African-Americans.
Micah Johnson was killed by a robot-delivered bomb Thursday after the shootings, which marked the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In all, 12 officers were shot just a few blocks from where President John F. Kennedy was slain in 1963.
In Georgia, Missouri and Tennessee, authorities said gun-wielding civilians also shot officers in individual attacks that came after two black men were killed this week in Louisiana and Minnesota. Two officers were wounded, one critically.
“America is weeping,” said Rep. G.K. Butterfield, head of the Congressional Black Caucus, reflecting mounting despair.
President Barack Obama and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott asked for the public’s prayers. In a letter posted online Friday, Abbott said “every life matters” and urged Texans to come together.
“In the end,” he wrote, “evil always fails.”
Johnson, 25, had amassed a personal arsenal at his home in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite, including bomb-making materials, rifles, ammunition and a journal of combat tactics, authorities said Friday.
He followed black militant groups on social media, including one that posted a message Wednesday encouraging violence against police.
Johnson was a private first class with a specialty in carpentry and masonry. He served in the Army Reserve for six years starting in 2009 and did one tour in Afghanistan from November 2013 to July 2014, the military said.
When Johnson was accused of sexual harassment by a female soldier in Afghanistan, he was sent back to the U.S. with the recommendation he receive an “other than honorable” discharge, but he later got an honorable discharge, said Bradford Glendening, a military lawyer.
In addition to the five slain officers, seven officers and two civilians were wounded.
The episode began Thursday evening while hundreds of people were gathered to protest the police killings of two more black men: Philando Castile, who was fatally shot near St. Paul, Minnesota, and Alton Sterling, who was shot in Louisiana after being pinned to the pavement by two white officers.
After shooting at the Dallas officers, Johnson tried to take refuge in a parking garage and exchanged gunfire with police, Police Chief David Brown said.
