As is usually the case following another mass shooting, attention turns towards unearthing every last detail on those involved.

The Dallas shooting is no different, and it is Micah Johnson who is front and centre of the investigation. He’s the gunman who spent two hours in a stand-off with police, a stand-off which came to an end when police strapped explosives to a robot and blew him up.

Over to the Telegraph for the details on those scrawlings:

[He] laughed at police, sang songs, and taunted them asking “How many did I get?” as he lay bleeding in a car park stairwell following the massacre.

During a two hour stand-off after he had murdered five officers and injured seven more Johnson also used his own blood to scrawl messages on a wall.

Most were illegible but the letters “RB” stood out.

There was speculation they may have stood for “Righteous Blood” and been a reference to Matthew 23:35 which says: “Upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth”.

Another theory was that when he scrawled “RB” in blood Johnson was trying to write “RBG”. The Red Blue and Green flag, also known as the Pan-African flag, featured prominently on his Facebook page as a symbol of black power.

The Dallas police have been criticised by some for their use of explosives to kill Johnson, but they believe they had no other option:

When negotiations failed police strapped a pound of C-4 explosives to a robot which was sent in to blow Johnson up.

David Brown, the Dallas police chief, said: “He basically was lying to us, playing games, laughing at us, singing, asking how many [officers] did he get.

“He was saying that he wanted to kill some more, and that there were bombs. I began to feel it was a split second before he would charge us and take out many more before we could kill him.”

Johnson, a former soldier who had served in Afghanistan, had hundreds of rounds of ammunition strapped to his body when he died.

Once again Obama will spend the next few days talking about how America needs gun law reforms, and once again those words of advice will fall on deaf ears.

[source:telegraph]