Austin, Texas bar shooting: What we know so far about the suspect – National

Police in Austin, Texas have identified the man suspected of killing two people and injuring dozens more after opening fire at a bar in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Who is the shooter?

The shooter was identified as 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne, a Senegalese national and a naturalized U.S. citizen residing in suburban Austin, according to NBC News.

During the shooting, the suspect was reportedly wearing a sweater with the words “Property of Allah” printed on it and a shirt with an Iranian flag theme underneath, authorities said. (The picture of the shooter wearing the sweater was first obtained by Fox News.)

Officers shot and killed Diagne shortly after the deadly rampage, police said.

The shooting happened outside Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden just before 2 a.m. along Sixth Street, a nightlife destination filled with bars and music clubs and only a few kilometres from the University of Texas at Austin.

Was this classified as a terrorist attack?

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Officers are still working to establish a motive and are not ruling out the possibility of terrorism. Diagne appears to have acted alone, investigators said, adding that the FBI-led investigation is in its preliminary stages.

“There were indicators that on the subject and in his vehicle that indicate potential nexus to terrorism,” Alex Doran, a special agent with the San Antonio FBI field office, said. “Again, it’s still too early to make a determination on that.”

Diagne first entered the U.S. on March 13, 2000, on a B-2 tourist visa and obtained legal permanent resident status in 2006 after marrying a U.S. citizen. He became a naturalized citizen in 2013, a homeland security official told the U.S. outlet.

In 2022, Diagne was arrested in Texas on a charge of collision with vehicle damage — a misdemeanour offence, said a DHS official.

Austin police Chief Lisa Davis said at a news conference that the gunman drove past the bar multiple times in his SUV before opening fire.

“At one point, he put his flashers on, pulled down his window and began using a pistol, shooting out of his car windows, striking patrons of the bar that were on the patio and out in front of the bar,” she said.

The suspect then stopped the car, exited with a rifle and opened fire at several passersby before officers in the area shot him.

Law enforcement and emergency services were already in the area because of crowds that tend to gather there on weekends, Davis said. The speed of response saved multiple lives, she added.

Nathan Comeaux, a 22-year-old senior at the nearby University of Texas at Austin, had spent the evening in the area with friends and said the bar was “full of college students, probably mostly UT kids, shoulder to shoulder, hundreds just enjoying their nights” when the shooting occurred.

The incident marked the 56th U.S. mass shooting this year and the one with the most victims so far, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which at least four people, not including the shooter, are injured or killed by gunfire.

There have been at least two other high-profile shootings in Austin’s Sixth Street entertainment district in the past five years, including one in the summer of 2021 that left 14 people wounded.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott warned that the state would respond aggressively to anyone trying to “use the current conflict in the Middle East to threaten Texas.”

Investigators have not said whether the shooting was motivated by the U.S. and Israel’s joint strikes on Iran. The identities of the deceased have not been released.

— With files from The Associated Press and Reuters

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