Dallas suspect changed after military service: Family

July 11, 2016 22:13

Military service changed the Dallas gunman from an extrovert into a hermit, his parents said in an interview.

Micah Johnson's mother, Delphine Johnson, told TheBlaze website in an interview published today that her son wanted to be a police officer as a child and that his six years in the Army Reserve, including a tour in Afghanistan, were "not what Micah thought it would be ... what he thought the military represented, it just didn't live up to his expectations."

His father, James Johnson said haltingly and through tears: "I don't know what to say to anybody to make anything better. I didn't see it coming."

Micah Johnson, a black 25-year-old who was accused of sexually harassing a female soldier while deployed in Afghanistan, fatally shot five officers in Thursday's attack while hundreds of people were gathered in downtown Dallas to protest recent fatal police shootings, and wounded at least nine officers and two civilians.

Eleven officers fired at Johnson and two used an explosive device, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said today.

He noted that the investigation will involve more than 170 hours of body camera footage and "countless hours" of dashcam video. Brown also said that Dallas police are taking all threats seriously in the wake of the shootings.

"Bravery is not a strong enough word to describe what they did that day," Brown said of officers' response to Thursday's events.

The police chief again defended the decision to kill Johnson with a bomb delivered by remote-controlled robot, had "already killed us in a grave way, and officers were in surgery that didn't make it."

"This wasn't an ethical dilemma for me," he said. "I'd do it again. I do it again to save our officers lives." Authorities have said Johnson had plans for a larger assault, possessed enough explosive material to inflict far greater harm and kept a journal of combat tactics.

"We're convinced that this suspect had other plans and thought that what he was doing was righteous and believed that he was going to target law enforcement make us pay for what he sees as law enforcement's efforts to punish people of color," Brown told CNN's "State of the Union" yesterday.

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