Dallas police on Saturday confirmed the death of a man suspected of launching an armed assault on the city’s police headquarters and leading officers on a chase that ended with an hours-long standoff in a suburban fast food restaurant’s parking lot.
The headquarters building was riddled by bullets in the attack, which happened at around 12.30am local time on Saturday morning. Police said they discovered multiple suspicious packages planted at the scene, one containing pipe bombs that detonated after being picked up by an anti-explosives robot, causing damage to cars.
Dallas police later said the pipe bombs that exploded contained nails and screws. Nearby residents were evacuated as officers searched for more devices, but no one was hurt other than the gunman, who gave his name to police as James Boulware –who was reported to be a white man with a history of family violence and a grudge against authorities, who he blamed after losing custody of his son.
Police exchanged gunfire with the assailant at the headquarters, which is near downtown Dallas opposite an apartment complex and a hotel, and in the parking lot of a Jack in the Box restaurant next to Interstate 45 in Hutchins, where he stopped his armoured vehicle after leading police on a 10-mile chase.
#BREAKING inside @Dallaspd HQ riddled with bullet holes #DallasPDShooting pic.twitter.com/jIZqd78di9
— Maj. Max Geron (@MaxDPD) June 13, 2015
The highway was closed to traffic. About 12 hours after the incident began, Dallas police said that the suspect was found dead in the van, seemingly as a result of being shot by a police sniper hours earlier.
“This has been a very chilling moment,” Dallas police chief David Brown said at a news conference. “We literally dodged bullets … It was very helter-skelter for a while.”
He said bullet holes were found on the headquarters’ second floor, the information desk, and in cars where officers had been sitting. The man’s van rammed a squad car and drove off. Brown said that only quick movement by officers and luck – one person went to get a Coke moments before the attack – saved lives.
A photograph posted on Twitter by Dallas police major Max Geron indicated more than two-dozen bullet holes in three window panes spanning about two metres.
Brown said an officer almost tripped over the bag containing the pipe bombs, “and if he had touched it he wouldn’t have survived … [the suspect] had planted packages to explode upon touch.”
In total, police said that out of five suspicious packages near the headquarters, two were found to contain explosives. In addition to the package that exploded, another was made safe by a controlled detonation.
After launching his attack, the suspect made a 911 call in which he said he was going to blow up police because they had accused him of being a terrorist and they took his son from him, Brown said. From that call, police traced the man’s number and began negotiations over the phone.
Brown said the decision was made for a Swat team to fire at the suspect after he became agitated during negotiations, ranting and growing “increasingly angry and threatening such that we were not only concerned for our officers there trying to contain this scene, being shot by him … and the nearby neighborhoods taking rounds based on his violence”.
Swat snipers shot out the vehicle’s engine at 4.35am, according to police. The man was shot at by police about half an hour later and a robot with a camera was sent to try to confirm that he had been killed. The FBI were also on the scene. Local reports said ATF agents were searching a house linked to Boulware in the east Dallas suburb of Mesquite.
After the suspect’s apparent death, police said they were cautious about accessing the vehicle for fear that it was rigged with explosives. They attempted to blow open the windscreen with an explosive device, which had no effect, then tried shooting it with a .50 calibre rifle. After opening the windscreen they used a water charge in an attempt to render any gunpowder inert.
Geron said on Twitter that at least two more pipe bombs were found inside the vehicle. Two controlled explosions sent plumes of fire surging from the van at around noon local time.
Later on Saturday police said the vehicle was on fire, and ammunition rounds were going off inside it. Police said in a Twitter post that the fire started when they used robots to clear the van of weapons, including pipe bombs.
Initial reports suggested there were as many as four suspects but officials said they now believed that a lone suspect took shots from multiple locations. Brown declined to confirm the suspect’s identity.
In 2013, Boulware, then 33 and a former mechanic, was arrested by sheriff’s deputies in Paris, Texas, on charges of assault and marijuana possession after he reportedly obtained guns, ammunition and body armour and threatened his family, churches and schools.
“He was going to just kill all the adult members of the family and then that’s when he made the comment he may shoot up some churches and schools,” Bob Hundley, the Paris police chief, said at the time.
Boulware’s father, Jim Boulware, told the Dallas Morning News his son “blames the police for taking his son away from him. I tried to tell him that the police are just doing their job”.
He said he had seen his son on Friday night and there was no hint of anything unusual in his behaviour, but that his life had deteriorated following the 2013 arrest, though the charges were dismissed. He told the newspaper that he noticed a strange van.
The van was reportedly a 1995 Ford model sold on eBay for $8,250 by a Georgia company that could not be reached on Saturday morning. The business described it in a since-deleted Facebook post as a “Zombie Apocalypse Assault Vehicle and Troop Transport”.
“This full armored zombie busting vehicle features convenient gun ports so no zombie juice touches you during a mass zombie take down,” the description said.
“It also has benches in the back so you can take turns resting during long Zombie sieges. The tactical step boards are installed for when you only need swords and axes for drive by mow downs. The bumpers are made of reinforced steel tubing, so no dents from smashing zombie heads!
“It’s full armour plated and has bullet proof windows just in case you run into other zombie hunting hordes who might try to take this bad boy from you.”
