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Live Blog: Shooter Was ‘Determined About Hurting More Officers,’ Chief Says

CNN screengrab
Dallas police chief David Brown appeared on CNN Sunday morning to discuss the police shooting.

Dallas police chief David Brown says the suspect in the deadly attack on Dallas police officers scrawled letters in his own blood on the walls of the parking garage where officers cornered and later killed him.

Brown also says the shooter was “very determined about hurting more officers.”

Brown told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday that Micah Johnson wrote lettering in blood before heading upstairs and writing more in his own blood. He says the 25-year-old Army veteran wrote the letters "RB," and that investigators are looking through things found in his suburban Dallas home to try to figure out what he may have meant by that.

The chief defended the decision to kill Johnson using a robot-delivered bomb, saying negotiations went nowhere and trying to "get him" in some other way would have put his officers in danger.

Brown says that during the roughly two-hour standoff in the garage, Johnson lied to and taunted the police negotiators.

Authorities say Johnson killed five police officers and wounded seven others and two civilians during an attack at a protest over last week's killings by police of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota.

“This suspect had been practicing explosive detonations and that the materials were such to have devastating effects throughout our city and North Texas area,” Brown told CNN. “We’re convinced that this suspect had other plans and thought that what he was doing was righteous and believed he was going to make law enforcement and target law enforcement, make us pay for what he sees as law enforcement’s efforts to punish people of color.”

Video: Watch The CNN Interview

Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o516LyCt4nU

Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq_BZGhi_Fg

Shooter Trained At Self-Defense School

The gunman who killed five police officers at a protest march had practiced military-style drills in is yard and trained at a private self-defense school that teaches special tactics, including "shooting on the move," a maneuver in which an attacker fires and changes position before firing again.

Micah Johnson, an Army veteran, received instruction at the Academy of Combative Warrior Arts in Richardson about two years ago, said the school's founder and chief instructor, Justin J. Everman.

Everman's statement was corroborated by a police report from May 8, 2015, when someone at a business a short distance away called in a report of several suspicious people in a parked SUV.

The investigating officer closed the case just minutes after arriving at a strip mall. While there, the officer spoke to Johnson, who said he "had just gotten out of a class at a nearby self-defense school."

Previous Work History

The owner of a community social services organization says the gunman who killed five police officers at a Dallas protest march worked for his organization.

Dallas-based Touch of Kindness subcontracts with the state to provide care for people with disabilities.

Owner Jeppi Carnegie says that Micah Johnson was paid to care for his brother, who was in his early 20s.

Carnegie said Johnson, until his death this week, received an hourly wage to look after his brother at the home in Mesquite where both men lived with their mother. Carnegie said he spoke with Johnson only once by phone, for less than a minute, and only then to confirm that he would be taking care of his brother.