Gavin Long Identified as Baton Rouge Shooter

The assailant who was cut down after murdering three police officers and wounding three more in a shootout with police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana Sunday morning [July 17], has been identified as Gavin Eugene Long of Kansas City, Missouri. While authorities report that they have captured the two individuals who were earlier deemed possible suspects, their status has been downgraded to "persons of interest" and Long has been confirmed as the "sole shooter." Investigators are still at work to establish whether Long acted completely alone.

Details into the incident have established that Long, who is being described as a Black male and ex-Marine Sergeant, carried out the shooting on his 29th birthday. According to CBS News, Long left the military with an honorable discharge in 2010. He is reported to have been in good academic standing as a former University of Alabama student, and was once married without children.  Two of the three officers have been identified as 32-year-old officer Montrell Jackson, and 41-year-old officer Matthew Gerald.  The third victim is a 45-year-old officer whose name has remained anonymous.

While not much else is yet known about his personal life or motives behind the act, witnesses at the scene tell of him staging the Airline Highway assault with a mask on, while dressed in all black. Police were reported to have been met with gun fire when responding to a 9 a.m. call about somebody openly carrying a firearm. Measures were immediately taken to secure the city of 230,000, locking down streets and highways within proximity, as the mayor put out a call for residents to remain off of the streets. Up to 20 police officers and a helicopter rushed to the scene, where Long was put down, and from where the injured officers where transported to two local hospitals that subsequently remained under police supervision.

“We as a nation have to be loud and clear that nothing justifies violence against law enforcement,” President Obama said in an address to the nation, following the assault. “Attacks on police are an attack on all of us and the rule of law that makes society possible.”