The black U.S. Marine Corps veteran who shot dead three police officers in Louisiana’s capital specifically targeted them, police said on Monday, as the United States reeled from the latest deadly violence involving police and black people.
Following Sunday’s shootings, Baton Rouge police officers took steps to increase their own security. Baton Rouge police spokesman Sergeant Don Coppola said, “We usually ride solo. We’re riding in pairs for now.”
The city had been the scene of repeated protests against police violence following the July 5 fatal shooting by officers of Alton Sterling, a black man, outside a convenience store.
The Baton Rouge gunman has been identified as Gavin Long, a 29-year-old from Kansas City, Missouri, who served in the Marines for five years, including a 2008 deployment in the Iraq war. Long, dressed in black and armed with a rifle, was shot dead on Sunday morning in a gunfight with police.
Long had legally changed his name in May 2015 to Cosmo Ausar Setepenra, according to records in Jackson County, Missouri.
Racial tension in the United States has been especially high since a black former U.S. Army Reserve soldier fatally shot five Dallas police officers who were patrolling a protest over the police shootings of Sterling and another black man in Minnesota.
“It’s a very tough situation here, an attack on the very fabric of society,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards told MSNBC on Monday.
Louisiana State Police spokesman Lieutenant J.B. Slaton told the New York Times on Monday that a preliminary investigation shows the Baton Rouge gunman “definitely ambushed those officers.”
“We are still trying to find out what his motive was, and that’s going to be part of our investigation. But we believe he was targeting those officers,” Slaton said.
A website, social media accounts and YouTube videos that appeared tied to Long include complaints about police treatment of black people and praise for killings of the Dallas policemen.
Documents also showed that Long pledged affiliation to an African-American offshoot of the U.S. anti-government Sovereign Citizen Movement.
The dead officers in Baton Rouge were identified as Montrell Jackson, 32; Matthew Gerald, 41; and Brad Garafola, 45.
Edwards said one of the wounded officers was fighting for his life while a second underwent surgery and needed further surgery on his neck. A third officer who had a graze wound to his neck was released from a hospital on Sunday.
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