Dallas shootings: Killer ‘prepared larger attack’
DETAILS have emerged of Micah Johnson’s online history, including his obsession with Rodney King and Martin Luther King’s assassination.
DETAILS have emerged of the online history Micah Johnson had including his obsession with Rodney King and Martin Luther King’s assassination.
According to CNN, sources said Johnson’s online history revealed he followed websites that focused on injustices committed on the black community.
He visited and liked several websites dedicated to Black Lives Matter and the New Black Panthers, and other hate groups.
One friend told CNN Johnson would repeatedly watch the beating of Rodney King.
“He was an expert on the history of the Martin Luther King assassination,” the friend said.
“And he studied Malcolm X.”
He also said Johnson had issues controlling his temper.
“He was a good black man with a little bit of an anger problem.”
He also liked a post on the African American Defense League Facebook page, which stated: “The Pig has shot and killed Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana!: You and I know what we must do and I don’t mean marching, making a lot of noise, or attending conventions. We must “Rally The Troops!” It is time to visit Louisiana and hold a barbeque. The highlight of our occasion will be to sprinkle Pigs Blood!”
His interest in such websites has experts examining if he was radicalised online.
Johnson, the man who shot dead five police officers in Dallas and wounded seven more was planning an even larger attack, the city’s police chief confirmed.
Johnson, 25, was angry with the recent killings of black men by police and wanted to kill white officers.
Police chief David Brown said he was “convinced” Johnson had wider plans.
Releasing chilling new details of the attack by Johnson, Brown said he taunted police as he negotiated with them during an hours long standoff — “playing games, laughing at us, singing” — asking how many cops he had killed and saying he wanted to take out more.
And at one point, Johnson, apparently wounded, wrote the letters “RB” in his own blood on a wall at the community college where he holed up during the shooting last Thursday. Seven other cops and two civilians were wounded.
Brown said it was not clear what those letters meant.
Johnson, who was black, also insisted on speaking only to a black police officer when he began negotiating with the police, Brown said.
Brown said the police were “going to turn over every rock” to make certain Johnson acted alone.
“I want to make sure there isn’t somebody out there that has something to do with this,” Brown said.
The 25-year-old army vet opened fire with a powerful rifle during a peaceful protest on Thursday evening in Dallas against the shooting deaths just days earlier of two black men, in Louisiana and Minnesota.
But a search of Johnson’s Dallas-area home after he was ultimately killed by police turned up bomb-making materials and a manual in which he wrote about military tactics.
Police now believe he had been planning something long beforehand, and that the two killings last week were a trigger that prompted him to act, Brown told CNN.
Investigators believe “based on evidence of bomb-making materials and a journal that the suspect had been practising 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,” Brown said.
“We’re convinced that this suspect had other plans,” he added. “And 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,” Brown said.
Johnson was a private in the army reserve and had served in Afghanistan. He knew the route of the Dallas march, and his military training apparently benefited him during the shooting, as he effectively triangulated police and started taking them out with his high caliber rifle, Brown said.
Originally published as Dallas shootings: Killer ‘prepared larger attack’