Two police officers sitting in their squad cars in central Iowa were shot and killed early Wednesday morning in a pair of “ambush-style attacks,” the Des Moines Police Department said.Authorities on Wednesday morning named Scott Michael Greene, 46, as the suspect in the shootings that killed the officers from Des Moines and Urbandale, a nearby city. They said Greene, an Urbandale resident, was last seen driving a blue Ford F-150 with a silver-colored topper. “Greene is believed to be armed and should be considered dangerous,” the Urbandale and Des Moines police departments said in a statement, urging people not to approach him but to call 911 instead. Authorities in the Des Moines area appeared shaken by the double shooting, which came during a year that has seen bloody attacks on officers in cities including Dallas and Baton Rouge, assaults that have fueled a sense of anxiety among law enforcement nationwide. During a news briefing, Sgt. Paul Parizek, a Des Moines police spokesman, said it did not appear there was any interaction between the officers and “the coward … that shot them while they sat in their car.” Parizek then briefly choked back emotion as another officer reached a hand out to show him support.
Parizek said later Wednesday morning that authorities did not know what might have motivated the shooting, and he noted that sometimes investigations do not turn up clear answers to that question. “We’re not anywhere close to that,” he said. “We may never know what motivated this act.” One of the officers was fatally shot next to Urbandale High School. A video uploaded to RU-vid last month by an account named Scott Greene was titled “Police Abuse, Civil Rights Violation at Urbandale High School” and appeared to show a person recording the footage arguing with police officers asking him to leave the area. In the video, the man recording the footage, who is identified by one officer as Greene, is heard telling the police that he was assaulted and almost mugged while “peacefully protesting” at what appears to be a high school. An officer is later seen explaining that the Confederate battle flag he was waving violated the school’s code.
2 окт 2024
