'Attacker': Police say one gunman identified himself as James Boulware (above) - a man from Paris, Texas, with a history of family violence

The mother of a gunman who was shot dead after attacking the Dallas police headquarters said her son 'heard voices' and 'was obviously a very troubled young man'.

James Boulware, 35, who is suspected of shooting dozens of bullets into the police building and planting pipe bombs in the area on Friday, had previously been arrested for violent behavior and had just lost a bitter custody battle over his 12-year-old son to his own mother.

The suspect's father, Jim Boulware, said his son, who was shot after a nine-hour stand-off on Saturday, blamed the police for losing custody battle, but he never expected his son to lash out in such a way.

Jim Boulware said that he thought his son would have directed his anger at his mother, Jeannine Hammond, who was re-granted custody of James Boulware's son in April, according to CNN.

Boulware, of Paris, Texas, had a history of violence with his mother, including an incident in which he strangled her during a disagreement in 2013, the same year his mother was first granted custody of her grandchild.

In 2013, Hammond had gone into the kitchen of the Dallas home where she, James Boulware and his uncle were staying.

After she told her son he was 'going to hell' for speaking 'rudely' about religion and North and South Korea, Boulware grabbed his mother's throat and began squeezing, according to the Dallas Morning News.

The uncle intervened, causing another a scuffle between the two men, which Hammond broke up by hitting the uncle on the head with a laptop, according to an affidavit.

Boulware's mother and uncle went to stay in a hotel and Boulware was later found with several guns, rifles, body armor and boxes of ammunition taken from the home.

Charges against Boulware in the incident were later dropped.

Mother: James Boulware's mother, Jeannine Hammond, was granted custody of the suspected shooter's son in 2013, the same year the suspect strangled his mother during a disagreement in their home

Family: Jim Boulware, James Boulware's father, said his son had hit a breaking point, and that he had 'tried to tell him that the police were just doing their job'

Van on fire: Boulware's van caught fire after police detonated one of at least two pipe bombs they found inside

Confirmation? Police sent in a bomb disposal robot to check whether Boulware was dead at the scene of the shootout after he was hit by a police sniper round

Jim Boulware said he believes that after James Boulware lost the April custody battle for his son, the police 'finally broke him', which led him to shoot dozens of bullets into into the main police building in the Texas city, prompting a midnight chase down the freeway.

'The system failed him to brink of breaking him. I don't say in any way that James is right. I tried to tell him that the police were just doing their job,' he said.

Hammond wrote in a statement released by an attorney that the custody trial factored into the attack and in 2013, she said that he talked to himself 'quite frequently and appears delusional'.

'We apologize to the police for his behavior,' Hammond said in a statement after Saturday's attack. 'We loved him and will remember him as the man he was before all of this took place. We are so grateful that no other families are having to bury anyone because of his actions.'

Family members had said that Boulware also made comments about 'shooting up schools and churches' the affidavit from 2013 said.

After the allegations two years ago, Boulware couldn't maintain a job and had to sell off his house, tools and other possessions to make ends meet, Jim Boulware said.

Scene: Massed police cars can be seen in front of the van in the shot above, with the bomb disposal robot nexdt to it

Approach: A police officer and FBI agent are seen not far from the van, which later burst into flames

Ram: The armored van is pictured above around midnight Friday about to slam into a patrol car outside the police HQ in Dallas, Texas

'I'm not saying he doesn't have some problems of some kind… but you can push someone so far and everybody will break,' Jim Boulware said of his son. 'He loved that boy. They never should have taken him away from him.'

Boulware's father said he last saw his son on Friday, when he said he was off to visit a friend in west Texas.

'And I told him, my last words were, "Have a nice trip",' Jim Boulware said.

Boulware, who also planted explosives around police headquarters, accused police of taking his son from him and claiming he was a terrorist in a furious rant to 911 dispatchers after the attack.

Dallas Police chief David Brown said that officers tried to negotiate with Boulware, but that discussions devolved into furious rants, which convinced the SWAT Team that their only option was to use lethal force.

It took another eight hours for officers to definitively confirm the kill.

They used robots to approach the van, which he said he had packed with C4 explosives.

Officers said that bomb disposal machines found at least two pipe bombs inside the vans.

While police were trying to detonate the devices under controlled conditions, one of the bomb blasts set light to other explosives in the van, starting a fire. Police say the pipe bombs were stuffed with screws, nails and other shrapnel.

This was the dramatic scene outside the Dallas Police headquarters after a gang opened fire which led to a police car chase which ended at a fast food parking lot

Shot dead: Police say a sniper shot Boulware around 5am. Pictured above are two officers at the scene with a sniper rifle

Cornered: Police chased the gunmen to a parking lot not far from this intersection on the I-45, where a stand-off continues

One bomb planted close to police HQ exploded on contact.

CNN footage showed a robot approaching the van and attempting to break the windshield at get to Boulware. Officers then started firing at it sniper rounds instead.

Officers initially believed that as many as four gunmen were involved in the attack.

But at a news conference Saturday morning they said they now believe Boulware acted alone, but fired so many rounds that witnesses mistakenly believed several men must have been attacking.

Images of the headquarters and patrol cars which were caught up in the crossfire show both riddled with bullets, fired from an automatic weapon.

No officers were killed in the exchange, which Police Chief Brown described as a miracle.

Automatic weapons blazed out in the Texas city around midnight after Boulware rammed his armored van into a police car then fled.

Suiting up: Police officers are pictured above preparing weapons to enter the stand-off with the gunmen

Heavy: A Dallas SWAT officer heads to the scene, where the gunmen have been holed up for hours

Police were taking cover next to a cruiser when the van sped towards them from round a corner and hit - but they managed to jump out of the way in time.

Boulware then backed up and sped down the street amid a hail of gunfire, video uploaded to social media showed.

Officers gave chase down the freeway, and have said they believe multiple gunmen are inside the vehicle.

At some point after the initial attack, police say he called 911 and embarked on a five-minute rant at police, threatening to 'blow up' officers as revenge for taking his son and apparently accusing him of being a terrorist.

Boulware had been through a custody dispute over his son, and had reportedly threatened judges before over his contact with the boy. Police said it is not clear why Boulware thought he was accused of terrorism.

Kim Cooks, one of the judges who had been referred to, told CNN that she had been checked on by police on Saturday.

Cooks said Boulware threatened her multiple times after the custody trial and said she was 'in shock' after hearing about what happened at the police headquarters.

SAVED BY A COKE: OFFICER 'WOULD HAVE DIED' WITHOUT SODA BREAK One Dallas police officer was sat directly in the path of Boulware's hail of bullets - but escaped death because they got up to grab a Coca-Cola. Describing how close his officers came to death, Police Chief David Brown said one staff member on duty inside HQ was sat right in Boulware's line of fire. The officer, he said, ended up dodging the hail of bullets because he got up for a coke moments before the attack began. Advertisement

'It doesn't surprise me that he did something like this,' Cooks said, 'I knew he was going to do something, but I always thought his target would have been me.'

Jim Boulware, the suspect's father, spoke to the Dallas Morning News on Saturday, and seemed to confirm that his son was involved.

He told the newspaper that he saw his son on Friday night and 'noticed a strange van', though never believed he was capable of an armed raid on police.

He said: 'He blames the police for taking his son away from him. I tried to tell him that the police are just doing their job.'

The chase ended in a fast food parking lot in the nearby suburb of Hutchins, where the gunmen and officers exchanged fire again.

During the stand-off, police called Boulware, who began to talk with officers but reportedly got so angry that he hung up time after time.

Police Chief Brown described the exchanges as 'on-again-off-again negotiations'.

He said: 'He would get angry and stop talking. He would rant. At some point negotiations just ceased - on his end.'

Boulware also told officers that he had loaded the van with C4, a military-grade explosive, and that it would explode if they approached.

Pipe bombs: Police said they found explosives near police headquarters. Pictured is the damage to vehicles after a police robot tried to disarm one of them. Another explosive was also found

Hail of bullets: Pictured is the scene from inside the Dallas Police Department the day after the attack

At 4:35am police snipers opened fire on his van. Police said that first they shot out the engine so that he couldn't drive off anywhere else.

At 5:07am a sniper shot Boulware through his van windshield. The shot is was fatal - though it took officers until around midday to be absolutely sure he had died.

Officers later found two pipe bombs, made with more conventional black gunpowder, rather than the threatened C4, inside the vehicle.

Meanwhile, police uncovered as many as five bombs planted around police headquarters.

One of the suspicious packages exploded on contact, damaging a bomb disposal robot and several cars. Police said their officers 'almost tripped over it' while searching in the night.

Another package was destroyed under a controlled detonation, while three others were found not to be bombs after all.

Surrounding apartments and businesses had been evacuated after the initial attack, but as of around 8:30am police said residents were being allowed back into their homes.

'Miracle': Leaders of the police department could hardly believe no officers were hurt amid all the gunfire. Pictured are booths in the lobby of the building

Hail of bullets: Pictured above is damage to a Dallas patrol car after the gunmen sprayed it with bullets. No police officers were injured in the attack