Law enforcement authorities in Dallas have determined that the man who shot and killed five law enforcement officers and injured seven others last Thursday had been planning broader attacks against police.
“It appears that our search of the suspect’s home in Mesquite leads us to believe, based on evidence of bomb-making materials and a journal, that this suspect had been practicing explosive detonations and that the materials were such that it was large enough to have devastating effects throughout our city and our North Texas area,” Dallas Police Chief David Brown told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview Sunday morning.
According to Brown, the shooter, Micah Johnson, “had other plans and thought that what he was doing was righteous and believed that 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.”
Brown said Johnson appeared to have been planning his attacks long before two black men were killed by police officers in separate incidents last week.
“We believe that the deaths in Minnesota and the deaths in Louisiana just sparked his delusion to fast-track his plans and saw the protest in Dallas as an opportunity to begin wreaking havoc on our officers,” he said, noting that officials still haven’t ruled out “whether or not others were complicit.”
“We want to be sure to follow every lead and we don’t want to miss any pieces of evidence that might lead to other things that we don’t know yet,” Brown said.
