 |
From left, Baton Rouge Police Officer Montrell Jackson, 32; Baton Rouge Police officer Matthew Gerald, 41; and East Baton Rouge Sheriff's deputy Brad Garafola, 45. All three were killed Sunday. (From left: courtesy of Trenisha Jackson via AP; EPA/Baton Rouge Police Department’; East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office via AP)
|
WASHINGTON POST
A gunman fatally shot three law enforcement officers and wounded three others here on Sunday before being killed in a shootout with the police.
In the early moments of a brutal ambush that took the lives of three officers, a man dressed in black and filled with contempt crept toward a Baton Rouge police vehicle and pointed his assault rifle at the window.
When Gavin Long realized no one was inside, he retreated from the gas station parking lot and got back into his rented Chevrolet Malibu, according to Louisiana investigators who at a Monday afternoon news conference offered an extraordinary account of Sunday morning’s violence. The 29-year-old from Kansas City, Mo., soon parked a few hundred feet north and sneaked back behind a series of buildings to the gas station.
Colonel Edmonson said a call came in to police dispatch early Sunday reporting . “A dude with a rifle,” in the vicinity of the Hammond Aire Plaza shopping center on Airline Highway — a commercial thoroughfare dotted with carwashes, car dealerships and chain stores that cuts through a leafy residential neighborhood. It is also about a mile from the Baton Rouge Police Department headquarters, where protesters had held numerous rallies since July 5, when the police here fatally shot Mr. Sterling, after a confrontation in front of a convenience store.
As police and deputies arrived, Long methodically worked his way around the side of a beauty salon, where he saw two Baton Rouge police officers.
He shot both of them, killing one and badly wounding the other, before injuring a third who had approached him from behind. As the officer in front of him crawled around outside the building, East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Deputy Brad Garafola hid behind a nearby trash bin and drew his gun. But when the 45-year-old noticed that his comrade was still alive, he left his cover and approached the officer.
It was then that Long turned the corner.
“He sees the deputy,” said Col. Michael Edmonson, the superintendent of the Louisiana State Police. “He shoots the deputy.”
Seconds later, the killer spotted the wounded officer on the ground and executed him.
Throughout the 10-minute rampage, Long walked past bystanders as if they didn’t exist — a clear indication to investigators that he was stalking those in uniform.
With three officers dead, Long ran back toward his car. He had left it near a carwash where he had caught sight of another officer vacuuming his vehicle. Just before Long had reached him, though, the officer pulled away, narrowly avoiding a likely firefight.
As Long approached his Chevrolet, he eyed a deputy who had just taken down his license plate and returned to his vehicle to call in the numbers.
Long shot him through the glass, leaving him in what was described on Monday as “very, very critical condition.”
He then wounded another officer.
Long, investigators believe, intended to continue his murderous rampage at the nearby police headquarters, but as he returned to the car, a member of Baton Rouge’s SWAT team trained his rifle on the killer.
He pulled the trigger.
The fatal shot, Edmonson said, was taken from more than 100 yards away.
The shooting was the latest episode in a month of violence and extraordinary racial tension in the country. The night after the police shooting of Mr. Sterling, who was selling CDs outside a convenience store here, a black man was killed by the police during a traffic stop in a St. Paul suburb. The next night, five police officers were killed by a gunman in Dallas.
Some details about the gunman began to emerge late Sunday: Officials identified him as Gavin Long, an African-American military veteran. According to military records released by the Marine Corps, Mr. Long served as a data network specialist and was a sergeant when he left the Marines in 2010. He enlisted in his hometown, Kansas City, Mo., in 2005, and was deployed to Iraq from June 2008 to January 2009, his records show. They also show a number of commendations, including the Good Conduct Medal.
On a social media site registered under the name Gavin Long, a young African-American man who refers to himself as “Cosmo” posted videos and podcasts... In one YouTube video, titled, “Protesting, Oppression and How to Deal with Bullies,” the man discusses the killings of African-American men at the hands of police officers, including the July 5 death here of Alton B. Sterling, and he advocates a bloody response instead of the protests that the deaths sparked.