Gunman In Texas Shooting Spree Was A Marine, Police Say

The Texas shooting spree suspect killed by police on Sunday morning was a Marine who was wanted for questioning in a North Carolina murder, police said Monday.

Esteban J. Smith, 23, is accused of going on an overnight shooting rampage in Texas that left one person dead and several injured, including a local sheriff. The shootings came to an end when a highway patrol trooper and state game warden killed Smith in a firefight, said Tom Vinger, spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Smith, who is stationed at Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base, North Carolina, appeared to choose his victims at random, police said.

A Camp Lejeune spokesman, Master Sgt. J.D. Cress, said authorities were investigating a connection between the Texas shooting rampage and a homicide in Jacksonville, North Carolina, near the base.

Police said the Texas shooting spree happened over the course of 90 minutes in the early morning hours on Sunday, when the suspect began shooting at a car, wounding a woman. Police believe the suspect then wounded two more people sitting in a car outside a convenience store.

Afterward he returned to where the first shooting took place and fired on another vehicle. A third person was hurt in that incident, though all people wounded were treated and released.

At close to 6 am on Sunday, police found 41-year-old Alicia Torres shot to death in her car in Eola. Within 15 minutes Concho County Sheriff Richard Doane caught up to the suspect on a highwa, and was wounded in a gunfight.

Three of the five people wounded in the shootings have been were treated in hospitals and discharged. Two others, including Sheriff Doane, are still in the hospital with non-life-threatening wounds.

Police said they found a handgun, assault rifle, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in the vehicle of the Texas rampage shooting suspect.