By Brad Brooks and Jana Winter<\/p>\n
March 2 (Reuters) \u2013 Authorities investigating a mass shooting at a bar in Austin, Texas, that killed at least two people said on Monday it was too early to say if the gunman\u00a0was motivated by the war \u200bin Iran.<\/p>\n
The body of the gunman, who was killed by police, was seen in \u200ca photo obtained by Reuters wearing a shirt with an Iranian flag and \u201cIRAN\u201d spelled out in green, white and red across the front. He was also wearing a sweatshirt that said \u201cProperty of Allah\u201d on it, a government official told Reuters.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur priority is finding answers and the motives behind this crime,\u201d Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis told reporters \u200cduring \u200ba briefing on Monday, emphasizing it was too early to \u2060understand the motives of the suspect.<\/p>\n
Alex \u2060Doran, acting special agent in charge of the FBI\u2019s San Antonio field office, said the bureau was investigating any links to terror, but that it was just one of \u201cmultiple other avenues\u201d agents are looking at.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always very difficult to determine what\u2019s in an individual\u2019s mind \u200bthat leads them to commit this type of violence,\u201d Doran said.<\/p>\n
Davis identified the two people killed at the scene of the shooting as Savitha Shan, 24, and Ryder Harrington, 22. She \u2060said that another person who was shot was expected to \u2060be taken off life support later on Monday.<\/p>\n
Law enforcement officials said the \u200bsuspect had a history of mental health conditions, according to an internal update from the National Counterterrorism \u200bCenter reviewed by Reuters.<\/p>\n
The shooter was identified as Ndiaga Diagne, a naturalized U.S. \u200ccitizen from Senegal, according to the Counterterrorism Center\u2019s update. Authorities have not yet publicly identified the gunman.<\/p>\n
The shooting happened outside Buford\u2019s, a popular bar in the West 6th Street stretch of Austin \u2014 known as the heart of the city\u2019s music and nightlife area.<\/p>\n
Prior to the attack, the shooter drove \u2060an SUV multiple times around the block where the bar is located, police said. He then turned on his hazard lights, rolled down the window and opened fire with a pistol on bar patrons, \u2060police added.<\/p>\n
The shooter then drove \u200cwest, parked the vehicle and got out, and started firing at \u2060pedestrians before police officers shot and killed him at a nearby intersection.<\/p>\n
On \u200bSunday, authorities \u200csaid that 14 other people were injured.<\/p>\n
The incident marked the 56th \u200bU.S. mass \u2060shooting 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.<\/p>\n
The U.S. had 407 mass shootings last year, according to archive data.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Colorado and Jana Winter in Washington; Editing by Paul \u200bThomasch and Bill Berkrot)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Brad Brooks and Jana Winter March 2 (Reuters) \u2013 Authorities investigating a mass shooting at a bar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-188269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}