BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA — Authorities say Gavin Long was “extremely accurate” in his assassinations of three police officers Sunday and spent several days planning the attack, CNN reported. <br /> <br />The violence in Baton Rouge, Louisiana began at 8:40 a.m. when police received reports of a man with a rifle spotted near Airline Highway, the New York Times reported. Police identified the gunman as Gavin Long, a former Marine. <br /> <br />At 8:42 a.m. shots were fired, and two minutes later one officer was killed by Long and another injured. More shots were exchanged between Long and a responding Sheriff’s deputy trying to help the injured officer. Long shot both of them to death. <br /> <br />Long was sighted near a car wash at 8:46 a.m. A SWAT rifleman later shot him to death from a distance of over 100 yards. Three other officers were wounded by Long during the violence. <br /> <br />The three officers Long killed were named as Baton Rouge officers Montrell Jackson, 32, and Matthew Gerald, 41, and 45-year-old East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Deputy Brad Garafola. <br /> <br />Long was honorably discharged from the Marines in 2010. Having joined in 2005, he’d reportedly rose to the rank of sergeant and also served in Iraq for a period of seven months until June 2009. <br /> <br />The shooting comes after Army veteran Micah Johnson killed five cops during a Black Lives Matter protest earlier this month in Dallas.
