Six police officers shot, three officers dead in Baton Rouge

BATON ROUGE, La. -- (WGNO/CNN) -- A Missouri man ambushed and killed three law officers and wounded three others in Baton Rouge on Sunday during a time when police nationwide and in the Louisiana city in particular have been on high alert after five officers were killed in a Dallas ambush July 7.

On Sunday, a man identified as Gavin Long of Kansas City went on a shooting rampage on his 29th birthday that left two police officers and a sheriff's deputy dead, police sources said. Long was a former Marine who spent time in Iraq and was discharged at the rank of sergeant in 2010, according to the U.S. military.

Responding police officers killed Long, who was born on July 17, 1987, in a gun battle after the other officers were ambushed, police sources told CNN.

Two of the officers who died were Baton Rouge Police officers. They are identified as Montrell Jackson, 32, and Matthew Gerald, 41. The third was a deputy with the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office. He has been as Brad Garafola, 45.

Two other sheriff's deputies were injured in the attack.

At an afternoon news conference, local and state authorities, including Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, said Long was thought to be the lone gunman. Earlier reports had said authorities believed there might have been more than one attacker.

There is not an "active shooter scenario" in Baton Rouge, said Col. Michael D. Edmonson, superintendent of the Louisiana State Police.

President Barack Obama on Sunday condemned the killings and all attacks on law enforcement.

"We as a nation have to be loud and clear that nothing justifies violence against law enforcement," Obama said, speaking from the White House press briefing room. "Attacks on police are an attack on all of us and the rule of law that makes society possible." In a written statement earlier in the day, Obama called the Baton Rough shootings a "cowardly and reprehensible assault."

The shooting Sunday took place around 8:40 a.m. (9:40 a.m. ET) in the city of about 230,000 people, already tense after a high-profile police shooting of Alton Sterling, an African-American man, on July 5.

On Sunday, police received a call of a "suspicious person walking down Airline Highway with an assault rifle," a source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN.

When police arrived, the shooting began.

By noon, authorities had secured the scene and were making sure there weren't any explosives left behind.

Initially, authorities believed two other shooters might be at large.

Long was wearing all black and was wearing a mask, Baton Rouge Police Department Sgt. Don Coppola said. Coppola said he did not know what the mask looked like, but that it was "some type of mask to conceal (the shooter's) identity."