mosquitos. >> we'll have much more and a jam packed show for you tomorrow. >> plus abby huntsman tomorrow. >> i will be here tomorrow. >> on this somber morning, thank you for joining us on this show tomorrow. we'll see you tomorrow. >> see you tomorrow. it's 10:00 a.m. on the east coast, 7:00 a.m. on the west coast, 9:00 a.m. here in dallas, texas, where we're learning much more about the shooter who launched a deadly ambush targeting police. investigators say when they searched micah johnson's home outside the city just yesterday, they found bomb-making materials and not a few, bulletproof vests, rifles and ammunition, plus a personal journal. in that journal, writings about combat tactics. a county judge here says the army veteran had written about a, quote, shoot and move tactic that navy s.e.a.l.s normally use. that killer may have fired from multiple locations, moving around during the killing spree.

and you may remember police initially said they believed to a man and a woman on the force that there were multiple shooters because in downtown with the high buildings, all of the sound bouncing from building to building, they couldn't tell where it was coming from. someone standing here would think it's here. someone standing there would think it's there and they would all hear it from all directions. the thinking was we're under attack from multiple locations. at the time, the police chief even said we think he may be -- that the shooters may be triangulating. in other words shooting from different directions above in what they called at the time a kill zone. now we know none of that was true. it was a fog of war sort of situation. it was noises that seemed to be coming from everywhere, but were really coming from one lone gunman, and they killed him. a police source tells a local news station that the shooter was laughing and singing during the final standoff with officers. fox news can't confirm that, but

the source, we're told, is very good and it's something that we'll get details on down the road. according to that officer, the man told them he had been working out to prepare for the attack. friends say johnson didn't seem interested in politics at all, but one of them tells "the dallas morning news" newspaper that the gunman was, quote, very affected by police shootings and that he had very strong feelings about being black. on his facebook page, the shooter had liked the new black panther party and the african-american defense league, which is a black militant group. but did he have direct ties to those groups? of that no one seems certain just yet. we're also learning more about the killer's time as an army reservist. his former military lawyer says while johnson was serving in afghanistan, a woman soldier accused him of sexual harassment and his commanders sent him home. the lawyer says the victim told investigators she wanted johnson to get mental help and asked for

an order of protection to keep him away from her family. the lawyer also said the killer's commanders advised the army not to give him an honorable discharge, but he did get an honorable discharge, he got that last year. the lawyer says, quote, someone really screwed up. of course hindsight is always clear. ahead we'll bring you the stories of heroism from the night of the ambush and tell you about the five officers who gave their lives to protect the people of dallas and its transit authority. the attack has put police departments across the country understandably on edge, and demonstrators have held more rallies. they happened last night in response to deadly police shootings that came in minnesota and louisiana. we'll get to live reports there throughout this hour. police in missouri and tennessee plus georgia have all reported attacks on officers following the ambush that happened here in dallas, so this is a nationwide event. casey stegall is live near the scene of the shooting in dallas.

what's the latest there? >> reporter: shepard, i can tell you that there are multiple law enforcement agencies that are on the ground behind me working what has been characterized as an extremely large, widespread and complicated crime scene. in fact city leaders say that this swath of downtown dallas will likely be closed until wednesday while this whole process plays out. they are making sure that all is are dotted and all ts are crossed clearly. the atf, the bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms has approximately 30 agents working this on the ground. a large part of what they're doing back there are using canines to help recover all of those shell casings. the reason why that's so important is because the hope is those shell casings will lead back to registered firearms, where they were purchased, things like that. it will paint a better picture for authorities in terms of what happened leading up to this event. police have said so far that

they have recovered at least two weapons, an assault rifle, which was semiautomatic, and a handgun. at the time the gunman exchanged fire and words with police during that more than two-hour long standoff, shepard, he told them that he had placed ieds or improvised explosive devices around downtown. canines swept this area. fortunately that turned out not to be the case and the all clear was given, shep. >> it's really interesting to see, casey, this story of the shell casings. having worked shooting scenes across the country sadly for a couple of decades, there's a pattern here. but here maybe more than some others. they want to find every single shell casing because every one that they can get, they want to be able to tie to some weapon. every police officer, we know how many weapons they fired so if they can get every bullet

every policeman fired or policewoman fired, they'll say we have this part of the situation understood and any shell casings left over they'll be able to tie to the weapons that the man used or that of someone else and that's how they can eliminate another shooter. what more are we learning from the search of the suspect's home? i know they're not telling us everything, but what are they telling us? >> well, we know that he lived with his family in a suburb outside of dallas called mesquite. it's only about 12 miles or so east of downtown dallas where we are standing today, shepard. the feds executing a search warrant at that home yesterday, as you outlined. among some of the items discovered by authorities, bulletproof vests, rifles, more ammunition, and this journal of sorts which is awfully chilling. it details combat tactics, according to authorities, which clearly tells police that this was a calculated and well thought-out attack. folks living in that mesquite neighborhood say that it is normally a quiet community.

boy, don't we always hear that in the wake of these shootings. people say i didn't think this would happen in my neighborhood. i didn't think that someone living in my neighborhood was capable of something like this. but that's what we're being told. fellow neighbors know their fellow neighbors in that community. nobody described anything out of the ordinary with that one suspect or his family. frankly, a lot of people living there are still in shock, like so many of us living in this community still are, shep. >> casey, our dallas-based reporter who's been covering news here for years. >> we obviously are having a technical problem with shepard smith in dallas and we'll get right back to you in just a moment. mike wilson is here, editor of "the dallas morning news" and tristan hallman, a reporter for the paper, their downtown office is just blocks from the scene of the ambush and this horrible crime.

a lot of people this morning not only mourning the loss of those brave police officers but also questioning some of the issues that have to do with crime and our black community. rudy giuliani this morning here on fox news discussing the problem of black on black crime. it is such a horrible situation in minority communities and police officers in our country are there to protect all of us. we will get back to shepard in dallas as we have the unfolding events this morning in just a moment. shep, i think we do have shep back. are you there? >> satellites are imperfect things, but they normally work when the day is nice. it's beautiful here, i don't have anything to blame it on. just a hitch in our get-along, that's what we'd say in texas. mike wilson is here and tristan hallman is a reporter for the paper. your home base was right in the middle of this. >> yeah, when i arrived at the paper on thursday night to work on the story, i couldn't get to the office because officers with

guns drawn were running and shouting and told me to go the other way so it took me 15 to 20 minutes just to get to the building. >> tristan, you were telling me before you came on air, you got a text message from a police officer? >> right. right about 9:00 p.m. a police source of mine texted me. i have since switched from covering the police department and he said an officer is dead. that's pretty alarming to me. we haven't had an officer killed in action since 2009. >> i'm personally interested to know, we talked about this before as well, who he talked to digitally or otherwise. we don't see anything in his facebook or his digital profile so far. the police have said really there was nothing -- there was no red flag to say someone should have known, but normally people can't keep their mouth closed. he had to have talked to someone. is there any lead on anything like that? >> at this point we don't know. there's a lot to suggest that he was frustrated with his place in the world, that he was angry at the way he perceived black

people to be treated in the country. but there's a lot more to discover about whom he spoke to in the last few days and what he might have said about his plans. >> tristan, do we know if those who were close to him in one way or another have been cooperative with this sort of information with authorities? >> there's no way to tell just yet. the only description that we've gotten of him is that he is a loner. that he did this kind of on his own, that he didn't coordinate with anyone. that he behaved in a manner that suggested that maybe he just carried this out all by himself. >> this journal of tactics of navy s.e.a.l.s, i guess you could write about that sort of thing and never talk about it, but it would be more likely really that it might come up in some conversation of some kind. >> i'd be speculating. we do know that the navy s.e.a.l.s journal and police are saying that he used a s.e.a.l. tactic of shoot and move, move to another position and shoot from other position but we don't know if they're making that connection speculatively or if

that was his plan. >> it's interesting that they said that because there's nothing in his military background, and we have a thorough picture of his military background, to suggest that he was ever trained as a sniper or navy s.e.a.l. or anything like that. >> right, that's my understanding as well. >> your paper, your immediate alert, as this was happening, were jarring just to read. i wonder what it's like to be putting that information out in your own community. you all live here and work here and have families here and children here. >> the first concern is that we have it right because there's so much information that's uncerta uncertain. people on the scene are tweeting and you need to be able to understand what's reliable and what's not. one of the powerful parts of being a local journalism institution is we were already there that night. our photographers, our reporters were on the ground and so we had our own sense of what was happening. >> it's not as if journalists were getting bad police information, it was that police were there and their own eyes and ears told them a story that wasn't true. we deal with this with casual observers of news events all the

time, but when trained lawmen don't know either, you know it's chaos. >> right, and that's what actually happened. we had a gunman shoot at police headquarters last year. there were a lot of people that believed there were multiple snipers shooting at them, that this was a terrorist attack, that this was a coordinated thing and it ended up being a lone gunman in that instance as well. >> tristan and mike, i read your paper all the time, but i particularly appreciated it over the last couple of days. congrats on the terrific work. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. it's dallasnews.com if you haven't been keeping up with it. it's a great source for new information here. and more than that, from my perspective, to get sort of a feeling of what it's like in this community. different communities react to matters like this in different ways. i guess kind of the north texas way here, if you know what that means. i think it's pretty well reflected at dallasnews.com this morning. it's worth a trip on your phone if you have a minute. ahead, the former deputy police chief of this city joins us on this special edition of "shepard smith reporting." saturday morning live in dallas.

a little overcast. it will hit 100 today, tomorrow, next week, the week after that. the week after that. if you're looking for 100, check it out. good. >> we are so proud, even in our mourning today, of the men and women who wear the uniform of the dallas police department as well as the dallas area rapid transit, for their heroism in the face of remarkable danger. running toward danger to aid those who need it the most, fulfilling their oath. to serve and protect and to do everything they can to help the citizens of this city.

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until the day it became something much more. and that is why you invest. the best returns aren't just measured in dollars. td ameritrade. the police department here in dallas mourning five officers killed in the sniper attack on thursday night as seven other officers continue their recovery this morning. let's bring in craig miller, the former deputy police chief here in the city of dallas and worked too many shootings over the years. how are the guys doing? do we have updates? >> well, many of the officers who were initially injured have been released from the hospital. there are still several that are in the hospital, but i think the department is still reeling and hurting. but dallas is a strong city and the community is strong. and i don't believe that the individual that committed this crime is indicative of the people in north texas and in

particular in dallas, and so for that reason the city is really rallying around the dallas police department. i think last night not just in dallas but in ft. worth, you saw the glow of blue on all the buildings downtown. >> it was cool. >> it's something to really make you proud of the people in the community and how they've really rallied around us. >> this process, you've been through it a lot more than i have, but this process usually begins in earnest once the attention of the nation and especially the attention of the community moves on to other matters, and that's normally when people who are healing need help. >> yeah, absolutely. if no one has seen a police funeral, it's very impactful. it's almost unimaginable the raw emotion that takes place not just in the service but in the processions that lead to those. right now there's planning because we have multiple -- five police funerals that we're trying to plan now and we have to get people in from out of

town, family members who aren't necessarily from our area who have to come in. the police associations here are very strong, very helpful. we have a great fund here, assist the officer fund that does a great job in helping the families of these fallen officers and those officers that are hurt and injured will need help as well. some of those injuries are very serious and we'll be working with them as well. >> the big investigation that's being undertaken, i know there's help from other jurisdictions, the feds are in as well, but getting every single piece of this puzzle together seems like a real priority. >> well, it really is because even though we believe possibly there was only one suspect in this case, we still don't know the nexus that's connecting that person to other people. i know yesterday they were in the house where this person is from, something that a lot of people aren't aware of. there were drugs found in that house as well. >> what kind of drugs? >> right now they're keeping

that as part of the investigation. >> but just in general. >> speed time, amphetamine type of drugs that would be used, but we don't have the ability probably at this time to do toxicology on the individual that was involved to know if something could have been a part of what was on the mind of this individual. but we also know that there are people that don't necessarily do things in a vacuum and there's certainly the possibility that other people could have known about this incident, even though they may not have necessarily pulled the trigger. i think that's one of the things that dallas police and chief brown talked about yesterday in his press conference is they want to see this thing all the way through and vet everything they possibly can to make sure if there's somebody that participated in this in some way or knew about it, that they're found. >> do you know how close that robot bomb was to him? i wonder if -- i'm curious to know if there's anything to do toxicology on? >> no. it's my understanding the robot was two feet from this individual?

>> it blew his body to unrecognizable proportions? >> i don't know that necessarily. only the people that were there at that time. >> if it was two feet from him and it carried c-4, the rest of that sentence writes itself. >> i believe you're exactly right, so that's something we're not going to have access to. in the world we live in now with the ability to track phones and computers and contacts and as we talked about previously, about the victimology and who he was communicating with and who he had been in contact with, that's all a really big part. >> he could have reached out and touched this robot, it was that close. >> as i understand, yes. yes, sir. >> they were using it as a communication device initially. >> yes. >> and i guess you don't think, well, that thing might blow up on me, because i guess if he had thought that, he might have tried to get away from it. >> as i understand it, he was in a corner and he had to be away from the officers because i'm sure there would have been snipers. >> still had a weapon. >> yes, sir, absolutely. but he was trying to be

concealed as much as he possibly could. in that concealment, he may not have been able to come out to where the robot was. >> that's a fascinating piece of equipment. it's been around a while but never been used in this way according to our federal law enforcement sources. this is the first time. >> absolutely. >> thank god some person didn't have to get up there and put himself or herself in the line of fire. >> and that's the whole value of having a robot. i was in that position as a bomb squad commander here in dallas for three years. i know we never performed a function like that. we worked very closely with the tactical and s.w.a.t. unit in training and doing exercises with them, but i think that is true. i think we're all finding out now it was the first time that a robot like that was used for a mission like this. >> it's so good to talk to you. i appreciate you over the last couple of days. i hope your city heals well, i know it will. >> i know the community is strong and they love us and we love the citizens of dallas. >> it's a nice relationship, thank you. >> yes, sir. ahead, what we're learning about the victims of the ambush. five police officers who leave behind wives, children,

grandchildren, great friends and a neighborhood and community in shock. we'll tell you more about those dallas heroes coming up. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ geico motorcycle, great rates for great rides.

so we just learned a lot of new information about what happened the night of the shooting from chief craig miller. first of all, they found drugs. he said there was some sort of upper, it was methamphetamine he tells me. not that they found it on him, because more particularly off camera in a bit more graphic way he explained there are hardly remains. because we've gotten new information about where he was in this parking garage. think of this, he had been shooting from a parking garage

down on police officers below. the police believe he moved from one level of the parking garage to another level of the parking garage using navy s.e.a.l. tactics to shoot and move so they would think he was somewhere and he would show up from somewhere else which would give them the idea that there was more than one. you act more cautiously when you think there's more than one. after all if you find one guy, you might get shot by the other so that was the thing they were working under. eventually they have him pinned in this parking garage. he's pinned in a corner in the parking garage. so the man is here in a corner. there are police officers communicating with him. a hostage negotiation team or a suspect negotiation team. he didn't have hostages. speaking to him through the facilities of this little robot. you've seen the pictures of the robot. so the robot is two feet from him, think about that. it's as far as your arm will reach, not even, when he's pinned in a corner but he has to stay pinned in a corner with his weapon, a long gun and a handgun and we believe other guns, though they haven't confirmed that yesterday -- yet.

but he had a long began for sure, a handgun and ammunition. they're communicating with him through this robot, which feet away. he has to stay crouched down in this corner because he doesn't want to have a shot from a sniper from somewhere else, a police sniper, so he's well hidden but communicating through this robot to the police. that's where they got all the information about him saying i want to kill white people. it's not as if the cops were up on top of him, they were speaking to him through the facilities of this robot. what he didn't realize is that robot had c-4 in it. when the authorities thought we've gotten all we can get. they warned him, if you will come out with your hands up, we will arrest you and put you through the justice system. if you will not do that, we're going to end your life. they told him that over and over. obviously you can't let him get up with those weapons and bring harm to some other officer or anyone else around. you can't let him move again, he's murdered five people. so you're speaking to him on the robot.

eventually the robot with c-4 in it blows up. and it sounds -- well, it doesn't sound like, the chief just confirmed to me, there is nothing left to test. in other words, he says they're not going to be able to do toxicology on his body because there is no body on which they can do toxicology. there was a bomb two feet from him. and there was concrete barriers around him from this parking garage. and the bomb went off and there was no more -- there was no more gunman. they found meth in his home, according to chief miller. they found methamphetamines in his home but they can't know if he was on them at the time, though they can certainly suspect. and they're working to find out about new contacts that he may have had with some of the these militant parties that we heard. a black panther group out of houston that said -- given him laudatory remarks and such. so they're working to talk to anyone involved with that. over the next few days it sounds

like the authorities at least are going to learn a lot more about what he's done. their goal according to chief miller is to find out what he did every moment of every day. trace him through where his phone records show he was. every time you move with your phone on, it pings off towers and try angina lats and they can go where you are. they can tell what home he's in, who he communicated with digitally, electronically and they'll speak with all those people. so we just learned a lot. we know they had him cornered. we know the robot bomb was two feet away. that's how they were communicating. and eventually that bomb blew up and ended everything about his existence. he was no longer -- there was no longer a body there, it blew up. next we'll talk to the president of the dallas police association about how you can help the officers' families, if that's what you'd like to do. he said love and support have been pouring in literally from around the world.

we'll get to that as we approach the bottom of the hour and the top of the news on this special edition of "shepard smith reporting" live this saturday morning in dallas. >> today our focus is on the victims and their families. they are heartbroken. the entire city of dallas is grieving. police across america, a tight-knit family, feels this loss to their core. what's it like to be in good hands? like finding new ways to be taken care of. home, car, life insurance obviously, ohhh... but with added touches you can't get everywhere else, like claim free rewards... or safe driving bonus checks. even a claim satisfaction guaranteeeeeeeeeee! in means protection plus unique extras only from an expert allstate agent. it's good to be in, good hands.