Las Vegas police are still trying to pinpoint a clear motive for the shooting spree that claimed the lives of two of their officers and a civilian this weekend.
The ambush happened on Sunday afternoon at a CiCi's Pizza restaurant. Officers Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo were eating lunch when a young married couple walked in and opened fire, sending customers ducking for cover.
Investigators say one of the officers attempted to fire back at the two suspects before being killed.
"I saw their gun in the hand, and he told me to tell the cops 'It's a revolution,'" one witness recalled.
"The suspects took the officers weapons and some ammunition from them on the way out the door and made a statement, something to the effect: 'This is a revolution,'" Assistant Sheriff Kevin C. McMahill, of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, said.
The couple, believed to be in their late 20s, is said to have draped the officers' bodies with a Revolutionary War era flag emblazoned with a yellow banner, a coiled snake, and the words, "don't tread on me."
From there the man and woman ran across the street to a Wal-Mart and shot and killed a third person.
Officers caught up with them at the back of the store, where police say the two carried out a murder-suicide pact.
"A short time later more shots were heard. Preliminarily, it appears the female suspect shot the male, then took her own life," Sheriff Gillespie said.
Officer Beck, 41, was a senior patrol officer with a wife and three children. Thirty-one-year-old Soldo, who joined the force in 2006, was married with a baby.
"It's a tragic day. It's a very, very difficult day," Las Vegas Sheriff Doug Gillespie, with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, said.
"But we still have a community to police, and we still have a community to protect," he continued. "We will be out there doing it with our heads held high, but with an emptiness in our hearts."
Meanwhile, police are looking into possible links to the white supremacy, the Las Vegas Review reports, saying investigators found symbols of swastikas during initial searches of the couple's apartment.
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