Dallas scarred again by national tragedy after police ambush

DALLAS (AP) — The memorial to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was a closed crime scene to the usual hordes of weekend tourists Saturday.

Police cruisers with flashing lights cordoned off 20 square downtown blocks where an Army reservist this week carried out the deadliest assault on U.S. law enforcement since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, while onlookers outside the barricades mourned five slain officers in a city long tormented by another singular violent event.

Among them was Marie Tippit, the 87-year-old widow of the Dallas police officer who Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed after killing Kennedy.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings also confronted the stigma of Kennedy head-on hours after the attack that left 12 officers and 2 civilians shot — praying with hundreds of worshippers in a public square that civic leaders in 1964 built after the assassination.

Authorities say Micah Johnson donned a protective vest and used a military-style semi-automatic rifle while firing at officers just blocks from where Kennedy was shot.

Though 53 years apart, the two sniper attacks were so close to each other that the tall, bone-white memorial to Kennedy's death is inside the wide crime scene perimeter police established.