Dallas suspect claims to have planted bombs—police chief

WASHINGTON—Dallas police exchanged gunfire early Friday with a suspect in a deadly shooting that has killed four officers who warned negotiators there were “bombs all over the place” in downtown Texas, officials said.

“The suspect that we are negotiating with that has exchanged gunfire with us over the last 45 minutes has told our negotiators that the end is coming, and he is going to hurt and kill more of us, meaning law enforcement. And that there are bombs all over the place in this garage and in downtown,” Police Chief David Brown told reporters.

“So we are being very careful in our tactics so we don’t injure our citizens in Dallas as we negotiate further.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Florida nightclub attack just the latest US mass shooting

A GUNMAN took hostages and opened fire inside a crowded gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday morning, killing approximately 20 people and wounding 42 others before SWAT officers killed him, authorities said. Police Chief John Mina said the shooter had an assault-style rifle, a handgun and a “suspicious device” with him during the attack, which is being investigated as an act of terrorism.

Here’s a look at some of the nation’s deadliest rampages since 2012:

— Feb. 25, 2016: Cedric Ford, 38, killed three people and wounded 14 others lawnmower factory where he worked in the central Kansas community of Hesston. The local police chief killed him during a shootout with 200 to 300 workers still in the building, authorities said.

— Feb. 20, 2016: Jason Dalton, 45, is accused of randomly shooting and killing six people and severely wounding two others during a series of attacks over several hours in the Kalamazoo, Michigan, area. Authorities say he paused between shootings to make money as an Uber driver. He faces murder and attempted murder charges.

— Dec. 2, 2015: Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, opened fire at a social services center in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people and wounding more than 20. They fled the scene but died hours later in a shootout with police.

— Oct. 1, 2015: A shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, left 10 people dead and seven wounded. Shooter Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, exchanged gunfire with police, then killed himself.

— June 17, 2015: Dylann Roof, 21, shot and killed nine African-American church members during a Bible study group inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Police contend the attack was racially motivated. Roof faces nine counts of murder in state court and dozens of federal charges, including hate crimes.

— May 23, 2014: A community college student, Elliot Rodger, 22, killed six people and wounded 13 in shooting and stabbing attacks in the area near the University of California, Santa Barbara, campus. Authorities said he apparently shot himself to death after a gunbattle with deputies.

— Sept. 16, 2013: Aaron Alexis, a mentally disturbed civilian contractor, shot 12 people to death at the Washington Navy Yard before he was killed in a police shootout.

— July 26, 2013: Pedro Vargas, 42, went on a shooting rampage at his Hialeah, Florida, apartment building, gunning down six people before officers fatally shot him.

— Dec. 14, 2012: In Newtown, Connecticut, an armed 20-year-old man entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and used a semi-automatic rifle to kill 26 people, including 20 first graders and six adult school staff members. He then killed himself.

— Sept. 27, 2012: In Minnesota’s deadliest workplace rampage, Andrew Engeldinger, who had just been fired, pulled a gun and fatally shot six people, including the company’s founder. He also wounded two others at Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis before taking his own life.

— Aug. 5, 2012: In Oak Creek, Wisconsin, 40-year-old gunman Wade Michael Page killed six worshippers at a Sikh Temple before killing himself.

— July 20, 2012: James Holmes, 27, fatally shot 12 people and injured 70 in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

— April 2, 2012: Seven people were killed and three were wounded when a 43-year-old former student opened fire at Oikos University in Oakland, California. One Goh was charged with seven counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder, but psychiatric evaluations concluded he suffered from long-term paranoid schizophrenia and was unfit to stand trial.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Filipino nabbed in shootings that killed 3 in Washington, DC area

SILVER SPRING, Maryland — A Filipino federal security officer suspected in three fatal shootings outside a high school, a mall and a supermarket in the Washington, D.C., area was arrested Friday, police said. Three people were also wounded in the shootings.

Eulalio Tordil, an employee of the Federal Protective Service, which provides security at federal properties, was taken into custody without incident near the supermarket, the scene of the last shooting, authorities said. The brief manhunt and seemingly indiscriminate shootings rekindled fears of the D.C. sniper in 2002, which paralyzed the nation’s capital and its suburbs.

Plainclothes officers trailed Tordil for an hour, watching him walk from store to store at a shopping center as they waited for the right time to arrest him. He had earlier threatened to “commit suicide by cop” and authorities wanted to make sure the public was safe when he was arrested.

“Knowing his behavior today, knowing of statements he made in the past, we did not want to endanger anyone and have a shootout when we took him into custody and that’s why he was taken into custody the way he was,” Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger said.

Tordil was put on administrative duties in March after a protective order was issued against him when his wife said he had threatened to harm her if she left him, The Washington Post reported. Tordil subjected their children to “intense-military-like discipline,” like pushups and detention in a dark closet, according to the order.

Authorities said Tordil followed his 44-year-old wife Gladys to their children’s high school Thursday. As she waited in an SUV in the parking lot of High Point High, Tordil confronted her and shot her. He also shot and wounded a man who tried to intervene.

The shooting occurred more than an hour after school and no students were harmed.

On Friday morning, about 15 miles from the school, police responded to a shooting at the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda. One person was initially shot and two others may have been shot coming to that person’s aid, said Montgomery County Police Assistant Chief Darryl McSwain. A man died and another one was in critical condition. A woman had injuries that were not life-threatening.

About a half an hour later, while police were still on the scene at the mall, they got call of a shooting at a Giant Food store in Aspen Hill, about 5 miles away. A woman who was sitting in her car was shot and killed, authorities said.

Tordil was spotted by officers and when he returned to his car, officers surrounded him.

“They had a bunch of guns pointed at him and he was coming out of the car with his hands up,” said Dominique Lee, who was walking out of the flower shop where she works when Tordil was arrested.

“He just got out of his car. He gave up,” said Jason Palmer, a private investigator who lives nearby and had started to search for the gunman himself. “They pinned him in.”

A weapon was found in Tordil’s car, but authorities have not described it.

The protective service said when he was put on administrative duty in March, his weapon, badge and credentials were taken.

The grocery store in Aspen Hill is a few hundred feet from a Michaels craft store that was first target by D.C. sniper John Allen Muhammad. Muhammad’s shot into the store did not hit anyone, but he killed a man about a mile away less than an hour later, kicking off a three-week killing spree that left 10 dead.

Tordil ate at the same Boston Market as Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, who was also convicted in the sniper attacks.

“They ate in the same restaurant where we were having the surveillance here today, which was an irony that was not lost on me,” said Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy. “I think it’s a coincidence.”

source: globalnation.inquirer.net

Chicago officials release reports in police shooting of teen

CHICAGO — Hundreds of pages of Chicago police reports released late Friday by city officials depict a contrasting narrative to squad car video footage in the shooting death of a black teenager by a white police officer.

Several officers, including the one now charged with murder in Laquan McDonald’s death, reported that McDonald approached officers while armed with a knife. However, squad car video released last week shows McDonald veering away from officers down a four-lane street in October 2014 before he was shot 16 times. It shows officer Jason Van Dyke opening fire from close range and continuing to fire after McDonald crumples to the ground.

Van Dyke told an investigator that McDonald was “swinging the knife in an aggressive, exaggerated manner” and that McDonald “raised the knife across chest” and pointed it at Van Dyke, according to one police report. Another report describes how Van Dyke feared for his life.

“In defense of his life, Van Dyke backpedaled and fired his handgun at McDonald, to stop the attack,” one document reads. “McDonald fell to the ground but continued to move and continued to grasp the knife, refusing to let go of it.”

The details emerged in hundreds of pages of handwritten and typed reports that prompted supervisors to rule McDonald’s death a justifiable homicide hours after he was shot.

The Cook County state’s attorney’s office charged Van Dyke last month, the same day the city released video of the shooting. City officials had fought in court for months to keep the video from public release, before deciding in November not to fight a judge’s order.

The release of the footage triggered protests and calls for public officials, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel, to resign. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has called for an overall federal probe of police department practices, which top Democratic presidential candidates to local Illinois politicians have echoed. Emanuel has since fired the police chief, expanded a body camera program and formed a task force.

Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the Independent Police Review Authority conducts all investigations of officer-involved shootings and the agency was given the case report and videos. He said that the US Department of Justice’s investigation was also ongoing.

“If the criminal investigation concludes that any officer participated in any wrongdoing, we will take swift action,” he said in an emailed statement.

Messages left for the authority, Emanuel’s spokeswoman, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez’ spokeswoman and a police union weren’t immediately returned.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Obama voices anger over Oregon shooting, urges gun control

WASHINGTON, United States—US President Barack Obama on Thursday voiced his anger and sadness after the country’s latest deadly shooting, this time at an Oregon community college, and made another impassioned plea for gun control legislation.

“Somehow this has become routine,” Obama said at the White House in reaction to the shooting by a 20-year-old gunman at Umpqua Community College in rural Roseburg, which left up to 10 dead.

“We can actually do something about it, but we’re going to have to change our laws,” Obama said. “It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net