Baton Rouge gunman was seeking out police, top state cop says
The gunman who shot and killed three police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was “certainly seeking out police officers,” according to the superintendent of state police.
State police Col. Mike Edmonson described the attack as an ambush in an interview with the Associated Press. “His movements, his direction, his attention was on police officers,” Edmonson said. The Washington Post and the New York Times also have stories.
The gunman, Gavin Long of Kansas City, was black and had served in Iraq in the Marines. Police were investigating whether he acted alone.
Long had sought to change his name last year in a documents that listed his nationality as “Washitaw,”according to the Washington Post story. The name apparently refers to his support for the black nationalist movement Washitaw Nation. The group says it doesn’t endorse violence.
President Obama said on Sunday that Americans should “temper our words and open our hearts” in the wake of the Baton Rouge shootings, CNN reported.
“We as a nation have to be loud and clear that nothing justifies violence against law enforcement. Attacks on police are an attack on all of us, and the rule of law that makes society possible,” Obama said.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch also commented on the shootings on Monday. “All of us are again heartbroken at the news of yet another tragedy; shocked by such callous disregard for human life; and dismayed at yet another instance of violence tearing at the fabric of our nation,” she said. “I condemn these heinous attacks in the strongest terms possible.”
