AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The gunman who opened fire outside a crowded Texas bar and killed two people in an attack that wounded 14 others was not on the radar of authorities before the shooting, federal and local investigators said Monday.
Both the FBI and police in Austin said Monday that it’s too soon to identify the motive behind the mass shooting early Sunday that the FBI has said is being investigated as a potential act of terrorism, coming after
the U.S. and Israel launched an attack on Iran.
“Our ultimate goal in everything we do is to determine the motive,” Alex Doran, the acting agent in charge of the FBI’s San Antonio office, said during a news conference.
Police identified the gunman as 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne. He was wearing clothes with an Iranian flag design and bearing the words “Property of Allah” during the attack, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.
Investigators are poring over thousands of hours of video and police said there are more than 150 witnesses to interview. “We are still in the early hours of this investigation,” said Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis.
The gunman legally bought the weapons used in the attack several years ago in San Antonio, Davis said.
She identified the two victims as 21-year-old Savitha Shan and 19-year-old Ryder Harrington.
Harrington was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity at Texas Tech University, his fraternity said in an Instagram post.
Diagne was originally from Senegal, according to multiple people briefed on the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.
He first entered the U.S in 2000 on a B-2 tourist visa and became a lawful permanent resident six years later after marrying a U.S. citizen, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Associated Press reporters on Monday were unable to reach Diagne’s family members in the Austin area or his former wife, who recently was listed as living near San Antonio. A person who answered the door at a house listed for his ex-wife declined to comment and told a reporter to talk with investigators.
The shooting erupted outside Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden along Sixth Street, a nightlife destination filled with bars and music clubs close to the University of Texas at Austin.
The gunman drove past the bar that was packed with students before circling back and firing the first shots from his SUV at people on the sidewalk and inside the bar, police said.
Inside the bar and across the street next to a food truck, some students dove for cover while others were motionless, trying to understand what was happening.
The shooting stopped for a moment.
The suspect parked, got out with a rifle and began shooting at others before officers rushed to the intersection and shot him, the police chief said.
University of Texas at Austin President Jim Davis said Sunday that some of those affected included “members of our Longhorn family.”
The FBI said just hours after the shooting that they found “indicators” on the gunman and in his vehicle leading them to look into the possibility of terrorism.
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This story has been corrected to show Harrington was 19, not 22, and that Shan was 21, not 24, based on revised information from Austin police.
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Associated Press writers Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia; John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio; and Alanna Durkin Richer, Eric Tucker and Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed.
