An FBI agent investigates the scene on West 6th Street at West Avenue following a shooting on Sunday, March 1, 2026.
Ricardo B. Brazziell/Austin American-Statesman
Law enforcement authorities on Monday offered scant additional details about the shooter suspected of killing two college students and injuring 14 others early Sunday on a bar-lined strip of West Sixth Street. But public records and interviews paint a picture of an elusive man who investigators say may have operated as a lone terrorist.
At a news briefing Monday, an FBI official said Ndiaga Diagne, 53, had not been on the agency’s radar before the attack, while Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said only that he appeared to have purchased the guns he used in the attack legally in 2017 in San Antonio. Neither speculated about Diagne’s motive though the attack is being investigated as a possible act of terrorism.
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Diagne’s path to Austin began in 2000, when he came to the U.S. on a visa from his native Senegal, the westernmost country in West Africa. He became a legal permanent resident in 2006 through marriage and a naturalized citizen in 2013.
Public records show Diagne married a woman, Aissatou Savare, in March 2012, and moved to San Antonio from the Bronx in New York in 2017.
The couple settled into a two-story, middle-class home in the Candlewood Park subdivision in northeast San Antonio, online records show. They separated more than seven years later, in October 2019, according to court records. Savare did not respond to phone calls requesting comment.
Law enforcement and federal investigators carried out a search warrant at a home in Pflugerville, Texas, on Sunday, March 1, 2026.
Ricardo B. Brazziell/Austin American-Statesman
In 2020, Diagne moved to a more modest home located nearby in the 4000 block of Indian Sunrise, also in northeast San Antonio. He was never listed as an owner of that residence or any other in Bexar County, property records show.
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Savare, who worked at one time as a Texas real estate agent, filed for divorce from Diagne in Bexar County in March 2022, according to court records. Savare retained an attorney to represent her during the divorce, but Diagne did not and instead chose to represent himself, online records show.
In the divorce petition, Savare’s lawyer said Diagne was “guilty of cruel treatment toward petitioner of a nature that renders further living together insupportable.”
Diagne responded to the divorce petition in a two-page handwritten letter, filed with the court on March 28, 2022. In the letter, he accused Savare of refusing to let him see their two sons.
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“I totally disagree and quite frankly feel insulted by the many false statements in the filing,” Diagne wrote. “The only reason I am here is out of care and mercy for my ex-wife or about to be ex-wife, because she knows full well in our culture and religion we do not need a marriage certificate to be husband and wife.”
The divorce was finalized in September 2022, according to Bexar County records, which indicate the couple’s two sons are now 9 and 12 years old.
That same year, records show Diagne was arrested related to damage to a vehicle.
Until about a year ago, Diagne lived in a modest residential area in Northeast San Antonio, according to a neighbor. The home is in the 4000 block of Indian Sunrise, a neighborhood of one-story wood-frame houses in a mixed industrial-residential part of the city.
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On Monday, a folding chair was positioned outside the front door of Diagne’s former residence. On the chair was a Ruko security camera equipped with a speaker. When a reporter knocked on the door, a male voice said through the speaker, “Get off the property.” A neighbor who lives across the street said Diagne moved out of the house about a year ago, and that the current occupants have no connection to him.
It’s unclear why Diagne moved to the Austin area.
Broken glass and a boarded-up patio door are seen at the home of Austin mass shooting suspect Ndiaga Diagne at the Eastridge Apartments in Del Valle on Monday, March 2, 2026.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
On Sunday, law enforcement breached a home in Pflugerville as part of their investigation. They also breached a unit at a sprawling apartment complex in Del Valle, where Diagne is believed to have lived most recently.
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Residents of neighboring units in Del Valle are still in disbelief that their community might be connected to such a shocking incident.
John Santana, a resident for the past year, was preparing to move out Sunday when a law enforcement operation involving local and federal officials began unfolding outside his door around 9:45 a.m.
“I couldn’t see the whole thing, but I heard ‘APD, FBI here, open up,” Santana told the American-Statesman Monday.
Santana said that he and his roommate stepped out onto their balcony to see what was going on but were quickly ordered to go inside by FBI officials. About 90 minutes later, Santana reported hearing what he described as law enforcement breaking a window and the sound of officers pulling the door off its hinges.
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The heavy law enforcement activity came as a shock to Santana, who described the Southeast Travis County apartment community — about one mile from Del Valle High School — as normally quiet and peaceful. Santana said law enforcement would occasionally respond to what seemed like domestic disputes at the property, but he had never witnessed an operation on the scale of what officials executed Sunday morning.
“I just can’t believe that happened here,” Santana said.
San Antonio Express-News reporter Sig Christenson contributed to this report.
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