The gunman who killed five police officers and wounded nine other people in Dallas this week had been accused of “egregious” sexual harassment in the Army and spent years accumulating a stockpile of weapons, according to investigators and his military lawyer.
The new details about Micah Xavier Johnson, 25, emerged Saturday as Dallas grieved and police remained on edge following the nation’s deadliest attack for law enforcement officers since Sept. 11, 2001.
Mourning at a memorial site outside the downtown police headquarters was interrupted in the afternoon by a report of a suspicious person in a parking garage behind the headquarters.
About a dozen officers could be seen rushing into the structure as police cruisers and a SWAT vehicle arrived as reinforcements. The police used explosives and a shotgun to breach locked fences and doors but did not find any suspects.
Johnson was killed by a police robot carrying a pound of C-4 explosives in a claw arm after he ambushed officers at a demonstration Thursday protesting recent high-profile police shootings, police said.
Investigators believe that he had assembled an arsenal of bomb-making materials, five handguns and a semi-automatic SKS assault rifle within the last two years, according to a federal law enforcement official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case. The first three handguns were purchased in September 2014, the officer said.
Officials have said that Johnson, who was black, kept a personal journal filled with combat tactics and wanted to kill white police officers following recent high-profile police shootings of black men.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, the county’s chief executive, said the journal shows that Johnson had “a detailed plan” and that it “wasn’t a journal of incoherent ramblings.”
Neighbors saw him doing military exercises in his backyard in the weeks before the attack, said Jenkins, adding that Johnson told a police negotiator he had been practicing for months.
Johnson also took a “simulated handgun” class at the Academy of Combative Warrior Arts in the Dallas suburb of Richardson about two years ago, according to an employee.
“Micah just took basic self-defense with us. We don’t know anything about him,” said Justin Everman, the school’s owner.
President Obama on Saturday called Johnson a “demented individual” who did not represent the feelings of other Americans.
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SOURCE: Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Matt Pearce and Del Wilber
The Loss Angeles Times
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