Gunmen Targeted Police in Tennessee, Missouri and Georgia, Authorities Say

Suspect in one of three separate incidents may have been ‘troubled’ by shootings of black men


An investigator uses a laser mapper at a shooting scene in Bristol, Tenn. Officials say the shooter, who killed one woman and wounded three other people Thursday morning, may have been motivated by recent police shootings of black men. PHOTO:ASSOCIATED PRESS



By JON KAMP
Updated July 8, 2016 7:58 p.m. ET

In a week of rising tensions following police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota, cops in Tennessee, Missouri and Georgia were targeted in a string of separate attacks against police, law-enforcement authorities said.

In Bristol, Tenn., a small city in the state’s northeast corner, a man who killed one woman and wounded three other people including a police officer early Thursday may have been motivated by recent incidents involving police and black people, Tennessee law enforcement authorities said Friday.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation named Lakeem Keon Scott, a 37-year-old black man, as the suspect behind the shootings. Mr. Scott opened fire along a Tennessee roadway, killing one woman, a driver identified as Jennifer Rooney, and wounding three others including the officer. All four victims were white, although authorities didn’t claim Mr. Scott specifically targeted white people.

Law-enforcement officials said Mr. Scott “may have targeted individuals and officers after being troubled by recent incidents involving African-Americans and law-enforcement officers in other parts of the country,” a reference to police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota earlier this week.

Police said he was armed with at least two weapons, including an “automatic-style rifle” and pistol, and a large amount of ammunition.

Authorities believe he fired shots from a parking lot along the roadway, a spokesman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said. Local police wounded Mr. Scott during a shootout, sending him to the hospital.


A weapon lays on the ground next to evidence markers in Bristol, Tenn. PHOTO: DAVID CRIGGER/ASSOCIATED PRESS


A Days Inn clerk who was shot through a window was in serious but stable condition at the same hospital Friday. Injuries to the two other Bristol-area shooting victims, including the officer, were less serious.

In Dallas late Thursday, 25-year-old sniper Micah Xavier Johnson ambushed police officers, killing five cops and injuring seven others in what may be the deadliest incident for U.S. cops since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Johnson, who was black, said he wanted to “kill white people, especially white officers,” according to the Dallas chief of police. After negotiating with Johnson for several hours, Dallas officers killed him using a bomb-disposal robot jury-rigged with explosives.

In Valdosta, Ga., authorities said a man called 911 early Friday to report a car break-in, then ambushed and shot the police officer who responded. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation identified the shooter as 22-year-old Stephen Paul Beck. The agency said he shot Police Officer Randall Hancock at least twice in his protective vest and once beneath the vest in the abdomen. The officer returned fire, striking the suspect.

The motive behind this shooting is unknown, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in a news release Friday. The police officer was in stable condition following the shooting, while the suspect was in serious condition. The police said there was no apparent connection to the ambush against Dallas police.

A police officer in suburban St. Louis was shot in an ambush-style attack as he walked back to his patrol car during a routine traffic stop Friday morning, but police declined to link the case to the recent shooting in Dallas of five officers or the officer-involved deaths of two black men earlier in the week.

The officer had pulled over the car for speeding in the city of Ballwin, Mo., authorities said. The officer spoke with the driver and was returning to his car when the man suddenly jumped out of the car, rapidly approached the officer and fired three shots. The officer was struck at least once.

Neighbors called 911, and the officer was in critical condition at a local hospital, said Kevin Scott, chief of the Ballwin department.

The driver of the car sped away but was eventually spotted by another officer several miles away and apprehended after a foot chase, Chief Scott said.

“We believe that that Ballwin officer was ambushed,” said Chief Jon Belmar of the St. Louis County Police Department, whose officers helped respond to the incident and are leading the investigation.

While referencing the events in Dallas, both officers declined to provide a motive for the shooting.

“I’m not going to try to get into his head,” Chief Belmar said. “I’m not going to give him a motive, but it’s safe to say it’s a very difficult time in law enforcement.”

New York Police Department Chief of Intelligence Thomas Galati said the department was investigating 17 threats against police that came in following the death of Alton Sterling, a black man killed by police in Baton Rouge, La., on Tuesday. None have been deemed credible, NYPD Commissioner William Bratton said at a news conference.

Mr. Bratton said the Dallas shootings were “eerily similar” to the murders of New York City Police Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos in 2014.

“Two of our police officers murdered during the height of demonstrations around issues of racial injustice,” he said. “This is a continuing crisis in this country that needs to be addressed.”

In Baton Rouge, the family of Mr. Sterling joined Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards at a news conference Friday where the governor called for peace despite grief and anger. “We are better than this,” Mr. Edwards said. “We are going to do better in the future.”

A lawyer for the Sterling family members said their hearts are broken by the deaths in Dallas. “It was a tragedy,” Justin Bamberg said in an interview. “They relate because they are dealing with their own tragedy.”

Mr. Bamberg, a South Carolina state legislator who also represented the family of Walter Scott, a black man killed last year by a white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., said it is wrong to respond to violence with violence.

“If you can mourn the loss of Alton Sterling, or Walter Scott, or Trayvon Martin, or Eric Garner, or Tamir Rice, and celebrate at the same time what happened to the officers in Dallas?” Mr. Bamberg said. “You have morphed into the very thing that you despise, which is the unjust and unlawful killing of innocent people.”

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