BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Three officers are confirmed dead and three others wounded after a shooting in Baton Rouge, a sheriff’s office spokeswoman said Sunday. One suspect is dead and law enforcement officials believe two others are still at large, the spokeswoman said.
Casey Rayborn Hicks, a spokeswoman for the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office, said in a statement that the public should call 911 immediately if they see anything suspicious.
The shooting — which happened just before 9 a.m., less than 1 mile from police headquarters — comes amid spiraling tensions across the city — and the country — between the black community and police. The races of the suspect or suspects and the officers were not immediately known.
Baton Rouge Police Sgt. Don Coppola told The Associated Press earlier that the officers were rushed to a local hospital. Coppola said authorities are asking people to stay away from the area.
Multiple police units were stationed at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, where stricken officers were believed to be undergoing treatment at a trauma center. A police officer with a long gun was blocking the parking lot at the emergency room.
Spokeswoman Ashley Mendoza said the hospital received five patients from the police shooting, all “law enforcement professionals.” Of the two who survived the shooting, one is in critical condition and the other is in fair condition.
Officers and deputies from the Baton Rouge Police Department and East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office were involved, according to Hicks.
Gov. John Bel Edwards asked the public to pray for the officers involved nad their families.
“Rest assured, every resource available to the State of Louisiana will be used to ensure the perpetrators are swiftly brought to justice,” Edwards said in a statement.
An Associated Press reporter on the scene saw police vehicles with lights flashing massed about a half mile from the police headquarters on Airline Highway. Police armed with long guns on the road stopped at least two vehicles driving away from the scene and checked their trunks and vehicles before allowing them to drive away.
Police-community relations in Baton Rouge have been especially tense since the killing of 37-year-old Alton Sterling, a black man killed by white officers earlier this month after a scuffle at a convenience store. The killing was captured on cellphone video and circulated widely on the internet.
It was followed a day later by the shooting death of another black man in Minnesota, whose girlfriend livestreamed the aftermath of his death on Facebook. Then on Thursday, a black gunman in Dallas opened fire on police at a protest about the police shootings, killing five officers and heightening tensions even further.
Over the weekend, thousands of people took to the streets in Baton Rouge to condemn Sterling’s death, including hundreds of demonstrators who congregated outside the police station. Authorities arrested about 200 people over the three-day weekend.
Michelle Rogers, 56, said the pastor at her church had led prayers Sunday for Sterling’s family and police officers, asking members of the congregation to stand up if they knew an officer.
Rogers said an officer in the congregation hastily left the church near the end of the service, and a pastor announced that “something had happened.”
“But he didn’t say what. Then we started getting texts about officers down,” she said.
Rogers and her husband drove near the scene, but were blocked at an intersection closed down by police.
“I can’t explain what brought us here,” she said. “We just said a prayer in the car for the families.”
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Oh, lord. Not again.
And the shooter’s life DOES NOT matter! The lives of those officers matter! I suppose that all of the officers shot were white, hence this shows that “black lives matter” movement is an exclusive to the connotation that ONLY black lives matter and is therefore racist movement and national guard has to sort this mess and dismember and break the organization that is propagating hatred,violence and extermination of people that are of white skin. If we had a hate group targeting black people randomly or black officers randomly we would see martial law in every state!
That is what the problem is – selective bias, and from the first president instead of setting high rank in accountability and integrity, he has done just the opposite! Given that black people present 13% of population in the U.S. – good luck to the next candidate, however right he were, getting into that office! He thinks he has done something for black people?! He just created resentment towards his ignorance and arrogance and he set up other candidates with unjust shadow cast, which is that in the 21st century we have a president who is black who is selecting justice and blaming the rule of law of the country instead of demanding accountability of all citizens!