REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BATON ROUGE -- Authorities sought to learn more on Monday about a decorated ex-US Marine sergeant who killed three police officers in Baton Rouge, some two weeks after police there shot dead a black man, sparking nationwide protests including one shattered by the massacre of five Dallas policemen.
The suspect, dressed in black and armed with a rifle, was shot dead on Sunday morning in a gunfight with police who converged on the scene of a confrontation that Mayor Kip Holden said began as an "ambush-style" attack.
Two Baton Rouge Police Department officers and one sheriff's deputy were killed, and one sheriff's deputy was critically wounded. Another officer and one other deputy suffered less severe wounds.
Col. Mike Edmonson, superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, told a news conference the gunman was believed to have acted alone.
It was not immediately clear whether there was a link between the bloodshed and unrest over the police killings of two black men in questionable circumstances this month - Alton Sterling, 37, in Baton Rouge on July 5, and Philando Castile, 32, near St. Paul, Minnesota, on July 6.
Police did not identify the suspect, but a US government official told Reuters he was Gavin Long, of Kansas City, Missouri. Long, who was black, was reported to be 29 years old.
According to the Pentagon, Long served in the Marines from 2005 until 2010, achieving the rank of sergeant. A data network specialist, he was deployed to Iraq from June 2008 until January 2009, earning several medals and commendations.
Authorities declined to offer a possible motive for the attack in Louisiana's capital, a city with a long history of distrust between African-Americans and law enforcement, which was inflamed by Sterling's death.
Social media postings linked to an individual named Gavin Long and a Kansas City address cordoned off by police included a July 10 YouTube video saying he was fed up with mistreatment of blacks and suggesting only violence and financial pressure would bring change.
He also said he was speaking from Dallas after going there to protest.
"It's only fighting back or money. That's all they care about," he said to the camera. "Revenue and blood, revenue and blood, revenue and blood."
In a separate video, he hinted that should "anything happen" to him, he wanted viewers to know he was "not affiliated" with any particular movement or group.
"I'm affiliated with the spirit of justice, nothing more nothing less," he said. "I thought my own thoughts, I made my own decisions."
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