Civilians Rattled Near Attack On Dallas Police HQ
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DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) — People just getting home late Friday night were greeted by a chaotic scene as they waited to be allowed into their buildings.
"There's bags with explosives in there. I heard one of them go off when I got here. It was just like a real huge boom. Kind of shook the ground," said Edward Vasquez, who lives nearby.
The boom was one of two explosions as police robots detonated bags of pipe bombs left behind. Officers found them after the shootout with the driver of a van who tried to ram them.
Anita Grendahl was seven floors up in an apartment building overlooking Lamar Street, and she had a birdseye view of what happened, "I have photos but not of the van, I was worried about getting shot," she said.
Police about to give media access to crime scene #DallasPDShooting pic.twitter.com/y8Y2PaTiRh
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Grendahl took snapshots of the aftermath. Todd Reese also reached for his cell phone and shot video, but it was what he saw beforehand that shocked him.
"That's when we noticed the van, and it actuually rammed, I would say two or three squad cars. It broke through something, the barrricade and rammed two or three squad cars. It was clearly an armored van," Reese said.
At his second news conference of the day, we asked Dallas Police Chief David O. Brown how close civilians came to getting caught in the crossfire, "He could have easily struck a civilian, but we think he was specifically targeting police officers," Brown said.
"It was a little nerve-wracking. It's the police station. You wouldn't expect anything to happen there," Grendahl said.
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