Two police officers in central Iowa were shot and killed early Wednesday morning in a pair of “ambush-style attacks,” the Des Moines Police Department said.
Police said both officers were sitting in their squad cars when they were killed.
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 like Dallas and Baton Rouge, assaults that 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 may 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 YouTube 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.
“In the current social climate that we’re in, when you fly a confederate flag standing in front of several African American people, that’s going to cause a disturbance, whether you intended to or not” the officer said. As a result, the officer said, this man was no longer allowed on the school’s property.
Another video posted by the same account showed a still image of a man holding a Confederate flag in what appears to be the stands at an athletic event.
Police said they had heard about YouTube videos possibly posted by Greene, but a spokesman said at a briefing Wednesday that he had not seen them yet. Officials with the Urbandale and Des Moines police did not immediately respond to requests for comments about whether the videos were posted by the suspect they are seeking.
The killings prompted schools in the area to close and launched law enforcement officers from multiple agencies into a sweeping search for Greene, who detectives identified as a suspect within hours of the shooting.
The first shooting in Iowa occurred at 1:06 a.m. when an officer in Urbandale, which is part of metropolitan Des Moines, responded to a report of shots fired, Parizek told The Washington Post.
That officer was shot while sitting alone in his patrol car at 70th Street and Aurora Ave., next to Urbandale High School. He was pronounced dead on the scene, Parizek said.
About 20 minutes later, Des Moines police officers responding to the shooting of the first officer came across a patrol car at Merle Hay Rd. and Sheridan Dr., an intersection about two miles away, where they found another officer with a gunshot wound, according to Parizek. The Des Moines officer, who had been among those responding, was transported to the Iowa Methodist Medical Center, where he too was pronounced dead.
Neither of the officers’ names have been released as the families have not yet been notified, according to officials in Des Moines, Iowa’s largest city.
Police said that both shootings appeared to have been ambushes, and Parizek said both officers “clearly were just seated in their cars when they were shot.”
