The man shot by police in Louisiana after they say he killed three Baton Rouge officers Sunday morning was in Dallas earlier this month, promoting a book and talking about resistance, according to witnesses and the suspect's own social media posts.
Gavin Long, of Kansas City, Missouri, visited three Dallas barber shops on July 10 and posted shirt cam video he recorded of those visits on Twitter. In the barber shops he avoided talk of violence and offered free books he had written under the pen name "Cosmo Setepenra," according to witnesses at the barber shops.
"He was so aggressive. He stood in the middle of my barber shop and it was like, 'Who gave you the mic?' And I'm trying to figure out how who's going to shut this man up," said Chanattra Long, who owns the His and Her's Barber Shop in the Wynnewood Village Shopping Center.
The book, called "The Cosmo Way," promotes healthy living.
"When he came in, it was about the book. Then it was about money. Then it was out the door. That was it. It was brief," said barber Bryan Davis. "There is absolutely nothing that you could pick out of the conversation that would tell you he was radical."
In a YouTube video Long said he posted from a Dallas hotel room on July 10, Long speaks about revolution.
"Zero have been successful just from protesting. It has never worked. And it never will. You got to fight back. That's the only way a bully knows. He doesn't know words. He can't understand words, I promise you," Long says in the video. "You're in a world that's ran by devils. Get this through your head right now. Devils run this. They don't understand words."
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
Long also visited the Classics Barber Shop on South Polk Street on July 10. A Twitter video was posted of the visit there. Neighbors watching it Monday wondered if he was looking for trouble in Dallas that day, too.
"It's just like they were just scoping, just to see, was it a policeman in here? See what somebody's saying so he would shoot them? You never know," neighbor Jennifer Warren said.
Warren said she is proud that her son wants to be a Dallas police officer but worried about harm that might come his way.
NBC News obtained an email Long sent from Dallas to a dozen people questioning whether the shooting of five Dallas police officers July 7 was staged.
In the email written under his pen name of Cosmos Setepenra, Long tells the group that "about four hours before the [Dallas shooting] event happened, I had made the decision….that I was coming to Dallas and was also gonna tour the south. Now that I'm here, there are a lot of people saying the police shooting was likely staged." Long goes on to say, "We are awakening a little bit more and more everyday and the demons are very afraid. Only a hit dog hollers."
There is no evidence Long was involved in the Dallas shootings. Authorities are still investigating all of the facts surrounding the Dallas and Baton Rouge cases.
