In an extraordinary move, police in Dallas used a bomb and a robot to kill a suspect in the deadly Dallas shooting early Friday morning.

Faced with a suspect holed up at El Centro College in Dallas and several officers already dead, law enforcement turned to the unusual method of detonating a bomb.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown told reporters Friday morning that after hours-long negotiations broke down and officers exchanged gunfire with the suspect, police weren’t left with many options to disarm the shooter.

“We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was. Other options would have exposed the officers to grave danger,” Brown said.

He confirmed that the explosion was the cause of the suspect’s death, and that the suspect did not kill himself, contrary to earlier news reports.

The shooting in Dallas left five police officers dead, seven officers injured, and two civilians injured.