UPDATE: The Baton Rouge police shooter has been identified as 29-year-old Gavin Long, two law enforcement sources tell CNN. The shooter apparently died in a shootout with police on his birthday. He was born, the sources said, on July 17,1987.
ORIGINAL:
BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (CNN) — “Six law enforcement officers were shot in Baton Rouge — three are dead and three others are injured,” Baton Rouge Police Department spokesman Sgt. Don Coppola told CNN.
The three injured officers were hospitalized in critical condition.
No motive has been identified at this time.
One suspect is dead, and two others may be at large in the Baton Rouge shooting, the East Baton Rouge sheriff’s office said.
Police received a call of “suspicious person walking down Airline Highway with an assault rifle,” a source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN. When police arrived, the shooting began.
The victims were from Baton Rouge Police Department as well as East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office, another official said.
“This is an unspeakable and unjustified attack on all of us at a time when we need unity and healing,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said.
The shooting took place around 9 a.m. Central Time.
Authorities believes two suspects may still be at large.
Since the shooting death of Alton Sterling by Baton Rouge police earlier this month, the department has worried about credible threats against officers.
It’s been an emotionally charged few days across the country because of the protests stemming from the Alton Sterling shooting, and the ambush on Dallas police officers where a sniper killed five officers.
Kip Holden, the mayor-president of East Baton Rouge Parish, said “everything is moving fast.”
“There is still an active scene. They are investigating,” he said. “Right now we are trying to get our arms around everything.”
Obama’s reaction
In response to the shooting of Baton Rouge officers, President Obama released the following statement:
“I condemn, in the strongest sense of the word, the attack on law enforcement in Baton Rouge. For the second time in two weeks, police officers who put their lives on the line for ours every day were doing their job when they were killed in 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.
I’ve offered my full support, and the full support of the federal government, to Governor Edwards, Mayor Holden, the Sheriff’s Office, and the Baton Rouge Police Department. And make no mistake – justice will be done.
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. These attacks are the work of cowards who speak for no one. They right no wrongs. They advance no causes. The officers in Baton Rouge; the officers in Dallas – they were our fellow Americans, part of our community, part of our country, with people who loved and needed them, and who need us now – all of us – to be at our best.
Today, on the Lord’s day, all of us stand united in prayer with the people of Baton Rouge, with the police officers who’ve been wounded, and with the grieving families of the fallen. May God bless them all.”
