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| 'Attacker': Police say one gunman identified himself as James Boulware - a man from Paris, Texas, with a history of family violence. Daily Mail |
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Police sniper shoots dead gunman who opened fire on Dallas Police HQ and planted EXPLOSIVES in a nine-hour stand off
Daily Mail
June 12, 2015
Area: Dallas, Ft. Worth
Police in Dallas have shot dead a ranting gunman who attacked their headquarters after cornering him in a nine-hour stand-off.
A SWAT sniper hit the attacker, who identified himself as James Boulware, 35, around 5am after chasing him into a Jack In The Box parking lot.
He had earlier rammed an armored van into a police cruisers and pumped dozens of bullets into the main police building in the Texas city, prompting a midnight chase down the freeway.
Boulware, who also planted explosives around police headquarters, accused police of taking his son from him and claiming he was a terrorist in a furious rant to 911 dispatchers after the attack.
Dallas Police chief David Brown said that officers tried to negotiate with Boulware, but that discussions devolved into furious rants, which convinced the SWAT Team that their only option was to use lethal force.
It took another eight hours for officers to definitively confirm the kill.
They used robots to approach the van, which he said he had packed with C4 explosives.
Officers said that bomb disposal machines found at least two pipe bombs inside the vans.
While police were trying to detonate the devices under controlled conditions, one of the bomb blasts set light to other explosives in the van, starting a fire. Police say the pipe bombs were stuffed with screws, nails and other shrapnel.
One bomb planted close to police HQ exploded on contact.
CNN footage showed a robot approaching the van and attempting to break the windshield at get to Boulware. Officers then started firing at it sniper rounds instead.
Officers initially believed that as many as four gunmen were involved in the attack.
But at a news conference Saturday morning they said they now believe Boulware acted alone, but fired so many rounds that witnesses mistakenly believed several men must have been attacking.
Images of the headquarters and patrol cars which were caught up in the crossfire show both riddled with bullets, fired from an automatic weapon.
No officers were killed in the exchange, which Police Chief Brown described as a miracle.
Automatic weapons blazed out in the Texas city around midnight after Boulware rammed his armored van into a police car then fled.
Police were taking cover next to a cruiser when the van sped towards them from round a corner and hit - but they managed to jump out of the way in time.
Boulware then backed up and sped down the street amid a hail of gunfire, video uploaded to social media showed.
Officers gave chase down the freeway, and have said they believe multiple gunmen are inside the vehicle.
At some point after the initial attack, police say he called 911 and embarked on a five-minute rant at police, threatening to 'blow up' officers as revenge for taking his son and apparently accusing him of being a terrorist.
Boulware had been through a custody dispute over his son, and had reportedly threatened judges before over his contact with the boy. Police said it is not clear why Boulware thought he was accused of terrorism.
Jim Boulware, the suspect's father, spoke to the Dallas Morning News on Saturday, and seemed to confirm that his son was involved.
He told the newspaper that he saw his son on Friday night and 'noticed a strange van', though never believed he was capable of an armed raid on police.
He said: 'He blames the police for taking his son away from him. I tried to tell him that the police are just doing their job.'
The chase ended in a fast food parking lot in the nearby suburb of Hutchins, where the gunmen and officers exchanged fire again.
During the stand-off, police called Boulware, who began to talk with officers but reportedly got so angry that he hung up time after time.
Police Chief Brown described the exchanges as 'on-again-off-again negotiations'.
He said: 'He would get angry and stop talking. He would rant. At some point negotiations just ceased - on his end.'
Boulware also told officers that he had loaded the van with C4, a military-grade explosive, and that it would explode if they approached.
At 4:35am police snipers opened fire on his van. Police said that first they shot out the engine so that he couldn't drive off anywhere else.
At 5:07am a sniper shot Boulware through his van windshield. The shot is was fatal - though it took officers until around midday to be absolutely sure he had died.
Officers later found two pipe bombs, made with more conventional black gunpowder, rather than the threatened C4, inside the vehicle.
Meanwhile, police uncovered as many as five bombs planted around police headquarters.
One of the suspicious packages exploded on contact, damaging a bomb disposal robot and several cars. Police said their officers 'almost tripped over it' while searching in the night.
Another package was destroyed under a controlled detonation, while three others were found not to be bombs after all.
Surrounding apartments and businesses had been evacuated after the initial attack, but as of around 8:30am police said residents were being allowed back into their homes.
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