"The end is coming."
Dallas Police Chief David Brown attributed those cryptic words to a slain suspect in Thursday night's killings of five police officers:
Is there any kind of religious connotation to those words? It's too early to know. But it certainly seems like a valid question.
ABC News reports:
One of the suspects in the ambush-style shootings in Dallas that left five police officers dead overnight served in the U.S. Army Reserve. The suspect told a hostage negotiator that he was upset about the recent police shootings of two black men and that he wanted to kill white people, especially police officers, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said at a news conference this morning.
The suspect, who was killed by police when they detonated a bomb delivered by robot, was identified today as 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson, multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News.
Johnson served as an Army reservist until April 2015. He was trained and served in the Army Reserve as a carpentry and masonry specialist, defense officials said.
The suspect "wanted to kill officers" and "expressed anger for Black Lives Matter," Brown said.
"None of that makes sense," Brown said.
At this early stage, details on Johnson's background as well as the attack itself remain sketchy.
Prayer will, of course, be a key religion angle for journalists to consider:
As I mentioned in my post yesterday on the Alton Sterling shooting in Baton Rouge, La., I'd love to see news organizations report on the actual content of the prayers: What are the words to God that those coming together are saying?
Those specific details — not just the fact that people prayed generically — are crucial.
Stay tuned for more GetReligion analysis as this story develops.