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Three police officers killed in Baton Rouge shooting, others injured Barack Obama condems killing of three police officers in Baton Rouge shooting
(about 1 hour later)
Three police officers have been killed after a gunfight in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the East Baton Rouge sheriff’s department said on Sunday. Three police officers were killed after a gunfight in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Sunday and three injured, one critically. The gunman was also killed, and police said they do not believe any other suspects currently threaten the city.
President Obama condemned the shooting and said attacks on police were “attacks against all of us and the rule of law that makes society possible”.
Related: Baton Rouge: police officers 'feared dead after shooting in Louisiana' - live updatesRelated: Baton Rouge: police officers 'feared dead after shooting in Louisiana' - live updates
Three other officers were injured, spokesperson Casey Hicks said in a statement. One suspect was killed and officers believed “two others may be at large”. At about 8.40am officers responded to a report of a man with a rifle and wearing black by a convenience store, state police colonel Mike Edmonson told reporters late on Sunday. Two minutes later, shots were reported over police radio, a recording of which was posted online.
“At approximately 9am Baton Rouge police officers and East Baton Rouge sheriff’s deputies were involved in a shooting incident on Airline Highway near Old Hammond Highway,” the department said.
Baton Rouge police corporal L’Jean McKneely said the shootout took place near a B-Quick Convenience Store by the highway. He declined to provide any more details what police knew so far about fight, saying, “that’s what I know for sure right now.”
“We’re securing the area with a deceased suspect, a suspect that has been killed. We’re making sure there aren’t any explosives in the area.”
McKneely later pleaded with the public to report “anything suspicious” – namely anyone with “long guns, rifles, hand guns” or who was “dressed in black, “army fatigues” or a mask.
“We don’t have any specific detail about what transpired,” he said. “We do believe it’s more than one suspect.”
He stressed that “we’re not sure of anything right now” when asked whether the shooting could be linked to recent protests against police brutality.
Officers were using a bomb-defusing robot to secure the scene, McKneely said, and federal law enforcement and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had joined Baton Rouge police and the sheriff’s department.
One injured officer is in critical condition, another is “fair” and the third in non-threatening condition, a hospital spokesperson said.
President Barack Obama condemned the shooting “in the strongest sense of the word”, calling it “a cowardly and reprehensible assault”.
“These are attacks on public servants, on the rule of law, and on civilized society, and they have to stop,” he said in a statement. “We may not yet know the motives for this attack, but I want to be clear: there is no justification for violence against law enforcement. None.”
The president said he has offered the full support of the federal government to Baton Rouge and its police. “Make no mistake – justice will be done.”
In the area of the shooting, dozens of officers investigated over the shopping center while others closed the roads and kept pedestrians far from the scene.
“The initial call was shots fired,” Kip Holden, the mayor-president of East Baton Rouge parish, told NBC. “Whenever an officer hears those words, those two words, the response is immediate, everybody in that area goes to that scene.”
He did not immediately return calls from the Guardian.
“We are advising the public to please take an alternate route and steer clear of the area,” the department said of the large crime scene, where they set up barricades and searched cars. “Those in the area are asked to remain indoors and contact law enforcement immediately if they see anything suspicious.”
John Bel Edwards, the governor of Louisiana, called the shooting “an unspeakable and unjustified attack on all of us”.
Hicks also called the local news station, and said police “believe that the area is contained though it is still active”.
Video taken by bystanders near the gunfight showed police taking cover behind their cruisers near a highway and a car wash, shots audible in the background.
A recording of police radio, posted on the site Broadcastify on Sunday afternoon, revealed the confusion of the moments when gunfire erupted.
“Supposedly a lady came up and said there’s a subject walking with a coat and an assault rifle behind the store,” one officer tells another on the recording, just before a second shouts on the line: “Shots fired, officer down! Shots fired, officer down!”“Supposedly a lady came up and said there’s a subject walking with a coat and an assault rifle behind the store,” one officer tells another on the recording, just before a second shouts on the line: “Shots fired, officer down! Shots fired, officer down!”
A chorus of voices on the line continue: “He is not in sight. Possible sniper.” Someone requests an armored car. Before long, an officer reports: “I’m hit. I’m right in front of it. By the car wash.” A gunfight erupted between officers and the suspect, and within minutes it was over, with the gunman dead by a car wash nearby the highway. A chorus of voices on the radio continued: “He is not in sight. Possible sniper.”
Police did not immediately give details about where shots were fired, nor whether there was a sniper. Before long, an officer reports: “I’m hit. I’m right in front of it. By the car wash.”
Baton Rouge has been racked by tense protests in recent weeks following the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling and then the killings of five police officers in Dallas a few days later. Last weekend thousands protested in the streets of the Louisiana city to condemn Sterling’s death, and police arrested about 200 people over three days. “We believe the person who shot and killed our officers, he is the person who was shot and killed at the scene,” Edmonson said.
Holden said he was not sure whether the shooting was related to the protests. “Common sense needs to prevail, we need to be the great city that this is,” he said. Although officials said they did not believe there was a shooter still active in the city, police major Doug Cain said: “We are not ready to say he acted alone.”
“Rest assured, every resource available to the state of Louisiana will be used to ensure the perpetrators are swiftly brought to justice,” the governor added in his statement. “For now, I’m asking all Louisianans to join Donna and me in praying for the officers who were involved and their families as the details continue to unfold.” Sheriff Sid Gautreaux gave a few details about the victims of the shooting. He said two Baton Rouge police officers, 41- and 32-years old, died of injuries, as did a 45-year-old sheriff’s deputy. Two deputies, 41- and 51-years-old, were wounded. One 41-year-old officer was wounded and remained in critical condition.
His voice breaking, Gautreaux pleaded for unity around a nation reeling from protests over the murder of five police officers in Dallas earlier this month, at a peaceful rally to protest police abuses.
“To me this is not so much about gun control as it is about what’s in men’s hearts,” Gautreaux said. “And until we come together as a nation, as a people, to heal as a people. If we don’t do that and this madness continues, we will surely perish as a people.”
Obama forcefully condemned the shooting in two statements, one delivered on national television to the nation. “Right now we don’t know the motive of the killer,” he said. We don’t know whether the killer set out to target police officers.”
But regardless of motive, the president said, attacks on police are “attacks against all of us and the rule of law that makes society possible”.
“Five days ago I traveled to Dallas for the memorial service of the officers who were slain there,” he continued. “I said that that killer would not be the last person who tries to make us turn on each other. It remains upon us to ensure that they fail.”
Obama urged Americans to temper their language and actions, especially at upcoming political conventions.
“We don’t need inflammatory rhetoric. We don’t need careless accusations,” he said. “Only we can prove that we have the grace and the character and the common humanity to end this kind of senseless violence.”
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee who recently called himself “the law and order candidate”, released a statement which said: “We grieve for the officers killed in Baton Rouge today. How many law enforcement and people have to die because of a lack of leadership in our country? We demand law and order.”
In the wake of high-profile shootings, police forces across the US have had increasingly strained relations with the communities they serve – particularly with African Americans, who are disproportionately likely to be killed by police.
Baton Rouge was the site of a recent police shooting of a Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, and subsequent protests against perceived police brutality and accompanying arrests.
Earlier in the afternoon a Baton Rouge police corporal, L’Jean McKneely, told media officers had used a bomb-defusing robot to secure the scene of the shooting. Federal law enforcement and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have joined the investigation.
Attorney general Loretta Lynch promised the full cooperation of the federal government in a statement. “For the second time in two weeks, multiple law enforcement officers have been killed in the line of duty,” she said. “There is no place in the United States for such appalling violence, and I condemn these acts in the strongest possible terms.”
“Our hearts and prayers are with the fallen and wounded officers, their families, and the entire Baton Rouge community in this extraordinarily difficult time.”
Multiple news outlets, citing anonymous sources, named the gunman as Gavin Long of Kansas City, Missouri, though the Guardian could not independently confirm the account.
Related: Fears in Baton Rouge underscore growing racial tension across US
Kip Holden, the mayor of East Baton Rouge Parish, alluded to criticism of Obama’s reaction to protests over police shootings when he said “This is a sad day in Baton Rouge” and added that people should “let peace prevail”.
“The president has acknowledged this violence,” Holden continued. “Let me say unequivocally … the president has responded to the needs of Baton Rouge. Not only that, the agencies you see here have always been partners with the state police, the sheriff’s office and the city police.
“We are one family, all seeking justice for all of our people. So let me thank the president and [adviser Valerie] Ms Jarrett for the calls we got.”
Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards spoke last at the press conference.
“The hatred just has to stop,” he said. “I wish the command of the English language that I have were adequate to the task to convey the full range of the emotions I am feeling.”
“We have to do better,” he added. “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. And the people who carried out this attack, these individuals, they do not represent the people of Baton Rouge, or of Louisiana, or of our country.
“There simply is no place for more violence. It doesn’t help anyone, it doesn’t further the conversation, it doesn’t address any injustice perceived or real. And we are not going to tolerate any more violence.”