Texas authorities on Thursday said three people were killed and 19 wounded during Sunday’s mass shooting in a popular Austin nightlife hub, but officials were mum about the gunman’s suspected links to terror groups that the FBI is reviewing.
Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis updated the number of casualties in the briefing and noted that all the victims were hit by gunfire.
The shooting suspect, Ndiaga Diagne, was gunned down by police.
Chief Davis said Jorge Pederson, a 30-year-old who moved to the city two weeks before the shooting, died late Monday after being taken off life support.
Mr. Pederson was among three people who were rushed to hospitals in critical condition following the shooting early Sunday. One person remains in treatment, while another has stabilized and is in recovery.
An online fundraiser of Mr. Pederson said he was an amateur mixed martial arts fighter who had moved from Minneapolis.
“His impact at the gym was that of a welcoming, warm and tough presence that changed many lives for the better,” Brody Oothoudt, the fundraiser’s organizer, wrote on the webpage. “Jorge showed many new fighters that their dreams were attainable through hard work and dedication, no matter who you are.”
Police previously announced that Ryder Harrington, 19, and Savitha Shan, 21, were killed at the scene of the shooting outside Buford’s Backyard Bar on West Sixth Street.
Chief Davis showed police body camera footage of the officers who responded to the shooting and stopped gunman Diagne in the middle of his rampage.
The video captured the officers running through a panicked crowd and taking aim at the rifle-wielding Diagne at an intersection on the bustling party strip.
Authorities said the assailant first opened fire on bar patrons from his car before driving down the street to continue shooting on foot.
Diagne, 53, was wearing a “Property of Allah” sweatshirt during the attack and had on a T-shirt with the Iranian flag on it, officials said. The shooting erupted a day after Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a joint U.S.-Israeli military strike.
Just hours after the attack, the FBI said Diagne had a “potential nexus to terrorism,” but Chief Davis did not share any progress on that part of the investigation Thursday.
“We are not ready to talk about exactly what that nexus is,” she said. “But again, from that early on at the scene, calling in the FBI was the right thing to do, and you talk about a scene of that gravity and then the potential for terrorism that had to be investigated, and it is.”
Diagne, a Senegalese native, came to the U.S. on a tourist visa in 2000. He married an American citizen six years later and was designated as a lawful permanent resident.
Diagne became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2013 and four years later legally bought both guns he used in the attack.
The assailant was arrested in New York City in 2022 for a misdemeanor hit-and-run charge with another driver.
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