Iowa police killing: Suspect held after two officers shot
- 2 November 2016
- From the section US & Canada
Police in the US state of Iowa say they have arrested the suspect in the "ambush style" killing of two police officers.
They were searching for Scott Greene, a 46-year-old man from Urbandale, a suburb of Des Moines.
The first officer was found shot in Urbandale at 01:06 local time (06:06 GMT) on Wednesday. The second was found 20 minutes later several blocks away.
Both were sitting in their patrol cars when they were attacked.
The motive for the attacks is unclear.
However a mobile phone video posted under Mr Greene's name in October shows a man complaining to police that a group of black people had hit him and taken from him a Confederate flag he was holding during a high school sports event.
The Confederate flag is widely seen as a symbol of slavery. It was also heavily associated with the man accused of killing nine black churchgoers in South Carolina last year.
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"I was peacefully protesting," the man in the video says.
"You have to understand that in the social climate that we're in, when you fly a Confederate flag in front of a group of African-Americans, that's going to cause a disturbance," a police officer replies.
Another video appears to show a photo of Mr Greene holding the Confederate flag in front of several black people.
Speaking earlier at a news conference, Sergeant Paul Parizek of Des Moines police said there was "somebody out there shooting police officers".
"We hope we find him before anybody else gets hurt. We definitely don't want anybody in the public, here in the community to get hurt but there's a clear and present danger to police officers right now, and we've doubled up our officers."
Iowa Governor Terry Branstad said in a statement that the killings were "an attack on the public safety of all Iowans".
