Eleven police officers were shot, four of them fatally, when two snipers opened fire with rifles during a protest over police shootings in downtown Dallas on Thursday evening, police said.
One suspect was in a "shootout" with a Dallas SWAT team and was taken into custody, with a "suspicious package" found near where he was captured, Dallas police said in a statement. A bomb squad was sent to the scene.
Another person wearing camouflage and carrying a rifle, identified as a "person of interest" in a police photo disseminated to the public, turned himself in, police said, though there was no indication the man was one of the shooters.
At one point, police cornered one of the suspects in a garage and were negotiating with him, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said.
He said authorities have reason to believe that the suspects had threatened to plant a bomb "in the downtown area."
"We believe that these suspects were positioning themselves in a way to triangulate on these officers from two different perches and garages in the downtown area and planned to injure and kill as many law enforcement officers as they could," Brown said.
Police said that two officers were in surgery and three were in critical condition.
At least four of the officers belonged to the Dallas Area Rapid Transit agency, including one of those who died, according to the agency's Twitter account.
An agency spokesman said the officers did not appear to be together when they were shot.
A Police Department spokeswoman emailed a message to reporters asking them to "please be patient while we sort through all of this information as this is clearly still an active scene."
Video shot by a Facebook user appeared to show officers ducking for cover as shots rang out.
A Dallas Morning News photographer tweeted footage that showed police ducking behind cars and an officer running with a rifle.
The protest began at Belo Garden Park, across from Bank of America Plaza in the center of downtown Dallas, one of several largely peaceful demonstrations across American cities in response to the shootings this week of two African-American men by white police officers.
"Enough is enough," demonstrators shouted, holding signs that said, "If all lives matter, why are black ones taken so easily?" and "Hate will not win. #BlackLivesMatter."
The area is a popular gathering place for demonstrations, including Black Lives Matter demonstrations, such as one held last year in memory of Sandra Bland, who was found dead in her jail cell three days after a traffic stop in July 2015.
Larissa Puro, a 26-year-old University of Southern California communications manager who was on vacation in Dallas for a family reunion, was holed up in the kitchen of the nearby Omni hotel kitchen at one point Thursday evening after shots were fired and the police manhunt was underway.
"My mom and I were downtown eating dinner and we took an Uber home, but it had to take a different route because of blocked streets," Puro said. "We couldn't enter our hotel, and had to enter through the convention center, and police told us to run into the hotel kitchen and said there had been a shooting," she said.
"People were crying," she said. "I feel so awful for all the police officers out there."
Hundreds of demonstrators had turned out earlier in the evening for a protest at Belo Gardens and a march to Main Street Gardens, according to the Dallas Morning News.
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