The man identified as the shooter who killed three Baton Rouge police officers on Sunday was in Dallas one week ago and recorded a video at a barber shop, according to a Twitter account linked to the gunman.
Video posted to a Twitter account under the name @convoswithcosmo appears to show Gavin Long visiting a South Dallas barber shop.
The account belonged to Long, a senior federal law enforcement official confirmed.
The video, posted on July 10, was labeled “My body-cam footage of me in Dallas out in them streets educating our people.”
It was three days earlier five Dallas police officers were shot and killed during a protest downtown.
“I’m here for you all,” the man said in the video, talking to people getting their hair cut. “I’m sacrificing. I’m on these streets. They are going to tell there’s not men like me out here. Yeah, we’re out here. They just don’t want to show you.”
Long appears to pass out a book to customers at the barber shop.
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“Everybody in this room got a purpose, just figure it out,” he said. “Even if it’s educating the ones up under you, that’s a purpose.”
In a separate video posted on Long's YouTube page the same day, he said "I had already decided that I was coming to Dallas before they even, you know, the police shooting already happened. So I was already decided."
Speaking about "victims fighting their oppressors," he said, "100 percent have been successful through fighting back," he said. "Zero have been successful just over simply protesting."
The video posts referring to Dallas weren’t the only Texas connection.
A LinkedIn account said Long graduated from Central Texas College in 2011 with an associate’s degree. Central Texas College is based in Killeen and serves 11 counties in Central Texas, according to its website.
Jonathan Dienst of NBC New York contributed to this report.
