Downtown Dallas: Police officers shot by two or more snipers from elevated positions.

[Drew Phipps]

The official first version was of at least three shooters from high buildings.

I watched the initial coverage carefully, I never heard "three shooters." I heard "triangulating fire from high buildings." You need 2 shooters to "triangulate fire" (that means 2 guys separated by some distance shooting at the same target) and occupy a plural number of buildings. It means the same officer or group of officers is taking fire from more than one direction.


There were also early experts CNN listening to the gunshots and calling 1 set a "long gun" and 1 set a "semi-automatic." You can read my earlier post for that description. The officers were not armed with rifles, at least until the SWAT team cornered that one guy in a building. There is also the mystery of the man/woman team that sped off from downtown and were apprehended after a high speed chase on the freeway. Last I heard, they were "both still in custody" and they "weren't cooperating with the investigation."


I think its entirely possible for 1 sniper to leave his perch, jump in his Tahoe, drive to a different location, begin a street level gunfight, and retreat into a 2 story parking garage to get blown up by a robot (assuming there's enough time between gunfights). It isn't possible for the officers to take sniper fire from more than one direction if there's only one bad guy.

I would also like to point out that the police chief was reporting that one guy was dead (IIRC it started off as a self inflicted gunshot wound) while the hours long standoff was still pending.