President Obama Pleads For Unity In Response To Police Shootings

A witness tells WAFB-TV (http://www.wafb.com/) that he saw a masked man in black shorts and shirt running from the scene where three Baton Rouge law enforcement officers were shot and killed.

President Barack Obama was mum on Sunday when asked whether the deadly attack on law enforcement officers in Baton Rouge would prompt him to visit the city. Now news outlets are revealing his name and other information about him.

One of the wounded officers “is in critical condition fighting for his life as we speak, [a] 41-year-old”, Edmonson said.

Thousands of people have protested Sterling’s death, and Baton Rouge police arrested more than 200 demonstrators.

Michelle Rogers said the pastor at her church led prayers Sunday for Sterling’s family and police officers, asking members of the congregation to stand up if they knew an officer. He was reported to have been wearing all black with his face covered, and was “shooting indiscriminately”.

About 30 seconds later, someone says shots are still being fired. Long is said to have been killed within minutes of officers responding to the scene. The LA Times also quotes an anonymous law enforcement source who describes Long as a “black separatist”.

Authorities said the dead gunman was the only person who fired at the officers, but they were unsure whether he had some kind of help from others, according to a state police spokesman.

“Baton Rouge officers at a convenience store observed the individual”.

As he said following the Dallas shooting, Obama reiterated that this would not be the last example of a person that tries to make the country turn against each other. Police have said they thought he was reaching for a gun.

“Regardless of motive, the death of these three courageous officers underscores the danger that police across the country confront every single day, and we as a nation have to be loud and clear that nothing justifies violence against law enforcement”.

Obama condemned the shooting during a a press briefing from Washington, D.C., that was streamed on the White House website and carried live on most major national media outlets.

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.

Obama pledged the federal government’s full support in the investigation of the incident. At one of the demonstrations in Dallas, a gunman opened fire on white officers assigned to the protest, killing five of them.

The shooting Sunday took place around 8:40 a.m. (9:40 a.m. ET) in the city of about 230,000 people, already tense after a high-profile police shooting of Alton Sterling, an African-American man, on July 5. L’Jean Mckneely Jr. says authorities do not have an immediate indication that explosives are present.

He said that authorities believe the “scene is contained”, meaning that a shooter was unlikely on the loose.