The FBI’s joint terrorism taskforce has been called in to help investigate a deadly mass shooting in downtown Austin, Texas, on Sunday morning in which a gunman opened fire in front of a bar popular with university students, killing two people and injuring 14 others before being fatally shot by police.
An FBI official, Alex Doran, told reporters at a press conference that it was too early to determine the shooter’s motivation. But he added that evidence found on the suspect and in his car indicated a “potential nexus to terrorism”.
CBS News reported that officials had identified the suspect as Ndiaga Diagne, who came to the US in 2006 from Senegal and is a naturalized American citizen. He was naturalized in 2013, the news channel said, having spent some years in New York before moving to Texas.
Law enforcement sources told the news channel that in addition to investigating potential terrorist motivations, investigators are also looking at the suspect’s previous history of mental health issues.
Fox News said it had obtained a photograph of the suspect carrying a rifle and wearing a light-colored sweatshirt saying “Property of Allah”. The Associated Press for its part reported being told by a law enforcement official that the gunman indeed wore that sweatshirt – as well as another with an Iranian flag design.
The city’s police chief, Lisa Davis, described the violence as a “tragic, tragic incident”, with the first calls about it being made to emergency services from Buford’s bar in West Sixth Street at 1.59am. Davis said the attacker drove a large sport-utility vehicle, circled the block several times and then fired a pistol from the car, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
The shooter then exited the SUV with a rifle and continued firing, Davis said.
Police responded within 57 seconds of the first emergency call, according to officials. When officers arrived at the bar, they were immediately confronted by a male gunman pointing a weapon at them, Davis said in an early morning press conference. They returned fire and killed the suspect.
By then, two bar customers had been killed. Fourteen more people were shot with injuries that required hospital treatment, three of whom were described to be in critical condition.
Videos taken inside the bar and posted on social media showed several people lying on the floor being treated by paramedics. One woman who was administering CPR to an individual lying on their back can be heard in the video shouting: “Please help me – I need help!”
The Austin American-Statesman reported that the gunman had used a pistol and an assault-rifle in the shooting, citing law enforcement. A Swat team was present on Sunday afternoon at a home believed to be connected to the suspect in Pfulgerville, Texas, the paper said.
As the FBI deepened its investigation into possible terrorist motives behind the mass shooting, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, put out a statement that explicitly referenced possible threats linked to the US-Israel strikes on Iran. He specifically warned “anyone who thinks about using the current conflict in the Middle East to threaten Texans or our critical infrastructure”.
Abbott said that Texas would respond to any such hostility “with decisive and overwhelming force to protect our state”.
The governor has ordered increased patrols and surveillance across the state by the Texas national guard and law enforcement.
Austin is the state capital of Texas with just over 1 million people. Its mayor, Kirk Watson, told reporters that he was thankful for the swift response of public safety officers.
The death toll could have risen substantially higher were it not for the arrival of police officers at the scene within under a minute.
“They saved lives. The speed with which they provided help and aid to people made a difference,” Watson said.
The emergency medical services chief of Austin, Robert Luckritz, said that police officers and paramedics were routinely embedded in the city’s downtown entertainment district at the weekend, which meant they were able to respond within seconds.
Eyewitnesses and bystanders spoke of the horrifying nature of the attack. “I heard screaming and yelling and crying,” Jeremiah Carbajal, a concierge at a nearby residential building, told the Austin American-Statesman.
A former manager at Buford’s, Scott Yancy, hugged one of the employees at the bar and burst into tears. He expressed gratitude that all the staff had survived.
“I’m so glad everyone is OK,” he said.
While local police investigators and FBI agents begin the painstaking work of piecing together the shooter’s actions and motivations, attention is already falling on Texas’s lax gun laws. Everytown, the advocacy group working to end gun violence, ranks Texas 32 out of 50 states for its weak systems of firearms control.
The group points out that five of the worst mass shootings in the past decade have taken place in Texas, and it accuses state lawmakers who assemble in Austin of continuing to “sit on their hands and refuse to enact foundational gun safety laws”.
Among its weak laws is a state law that allows anyone to carry a concealed handgun in public without a permit.
The Gun Violence Archive which curates one of the most authoritative databases of US gun violence, has recorded 56 mass shootings in the country so far this year as of early Sunday. The site defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more victims are shot or killed, not including the attacker.
US House member Greg Casar, a Democrat who represents parts of Austin, called for action on the scourge of guns in the country. “We must end America’s gun violence epidemic,” he said on X. “Americans should be able to have fun at a bar without it turning into an unspeakable nightmare like this one.”
Austin was not the only US city to be touched by gun violence in the early hours of Sunday. At least nine people were injured in a shooting in Cincinnati that took place at about 1am at a music venue, Riverfront Live.
All the victims in that case were taken to nearby hospitals with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds. There was no immediate information about a suspect in that shooting.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
