A Saskatchewan doctor living in Dallas says the city's residents are still feeling the aftermath of violence following last week's shooting.

"I honestly did not imagine that something like this would happen. It's something that I would consider unthinkable in Saskatchewan. You know, somebody shooting people from tall buildings just doesn't happen there," Dr. Cameron McDougall, who was born in Yorkton, Sask., said.

This past Thursday, a lone gunman opened fire, killing five police officers in Dallas. It happened while hundreds of people gathered to protest the deadly police shootings of two black men in Minnesota and Louisiana.

But as the Black Lives Matter rally progressed, the scene turned chaotic. Gunshots rang out targeting white police officers. And while helicopters hovered overhead, officers with automatic rifles lined the street corners.

Dr. Cameron McDougall works at the Parkland Memorial Hospital, a trauma centre in Dallas where the fallen officers were taken. (Submitted by Dr. Cameron McDougall)

"I live in uptown Dallas which is not too far, maybe five or 10 blocks, from where it was going on so we could see the helicopters," McDougall said.

He works at the Parkland Memorial Hospital, a trauma centre in Dallas where the fallen officers were taken.

McDougall said during the incident, he had just gotten off of work and didn't know what was happening until people from the rally began wandering into his building, sobbing from all the commotion.

The next morning

There was a distant sense of shock going into the hospital the next morning, according to McDougall.

"People were definitely affected and people definitely acknowledged what had happened but there was very much — and I felt the same way — this desire to move on and not discuss it any further," he explained.

"It may as well be in another city. But at the same, people are laying flowers on the streets and these sort of things and acknowledging that something terrible has happened. So, it kind of has two fronts to it."

The shootings just a few blocks from where President John F. Kennedy was slain in 1963 marked the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.​