The family of a man suspected in a brazen attack on Dallas Police headquarters Saturday said he harbored a personal grudge against cops, and has a violent criminal history that includes death threats and assaults on relatives, and alleged plans to gun down innocent people at schools and churches.
The suspect in the late-night shootout in downtown Dallas identified himself to police negotiators as James Boulware, 35.
Before cutting communications, he told negotiators that cops took his child from him and accused him of being a terrorist, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said in a news conference Saturday. Boulware said he was going to "blow up" the police in retribution.
The suspect died Saturday following a standoff with law enforcement in a parking lot in Hutchins, Texas.
Authorities have not yet confirmed the suspect's identity, but Boulware's father, Jim, told the Dallas Morning News that his son blamed police for his losing custody of his son.
"He blames the police for taking his son away from him. I tried to tell him that the police are just doing their job," Jim Boulware told the newspaper. "I'm not saying he doesn't have some problems of some kind, but you can push someone so far and everybody will break."
Jim Boulware told the Dallas Morning News that James was unable to find work after a run-in with the law in 2013, and subsequently lost custody of his son. According to WFAA, the case was eventually dropped, but the allegations cast a long shadow.
Lamar County Jail records obtained by WFAA show that Boulware was arrested in May 2013 for allegedly assaulting several members of his family in an incident in Paris, Texas. He was charged with one count of impeding a family member's breath or circulation and another count of causing bodily injury to a family member.
Paris Police Chief Bob Hundley told KTEN at the time that Boulware had choked his mother, then threatened to "kill all the adult members of the family."
Boulware's brother, Andrew, told the station that James also threatened to shoot up churches and schools. Family members were convinced he was capable of it, and called police.
"He had been talking about the schools and churches being soft targets, being easy targets because no one in them was armed," Andrew Boulware told the station at the time.
When police arrested James Boulware in 2013, they found a cache of guns and ammunition in his home. They confiscated at least four long guns, three handguns, body armor and tubs of ammunition.
Jim Boulware told the Dallas Morning News that he had seen his son Friday night and that there was no sign of trouble, although his son had recently purchased a strange van that he'd intended to live in.
WFAA's Jason Whitely reported that an armored van was used in the assault on police headquarters.
Video taken by a witness to the shootout shows the suspect plow into a Dallas Police cruiser with the van, after which gunfire erupts. Shots were fired into squad cars, but no officers were injured. Cops also disposed of five suspicious containers found near police headquarters, at least two of which contained black powder explosives.
Preliminary reports said there may have been up to four suspects in the shootout, but so far no others have been identified.
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