Cellphone video captures the shootout involving a man who could be linked to the slaying of Colorado's state prison chief. NBC's Kristen Dahlgren reports.
By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News
Investigators are looking into whether a paroled white supremacist may have killed a pizza delivery man and gunned down the top prisons official in Colorado before he led Texas authorities on a wild chase and shootout.
One theory in the case is that the parolee killed the delivery man for his uniform, and used the disguise to get the prisons official to open the door.
Investigators also believe the spree may be connected to a gang of white supremacists who are still in prison.
At the center of the investigation is Evan Spencer Ebel, 28, who died Thursday after the chase and shootout in Texas. Authorities from Colorado were in Texas on Friday, examining the car for evidence to tie him to the Colorado killings.
?We don?t know yet exactly whether this is the guy,? Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper told reporters. ?There?s some indication. I hope it is.?
Authorities from both states offered few details Friday about what evidence they have turned up and stressed that the investigation was still open.
?We are on heightened alert,? said Steve Johnson, assistant director of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. ?We don?t have any reason to dismiss that at this point.?
Sheriff David Walker of Wise County, Texas, said investigators had ?no idea? why Ebel was in Texas. Medical examiners ruled Friday that he died of a single gunshot wound to the middle of the forehead.
The prisons official, Tom Clements, was shot to death at his front door Tuesday night in the Denver suburbs. A dark car was seen idling outside, and authorities launched a manhunt.
Two days later and hundreds of miles away, late Thursday morning in Texas, authorities came across a dark sedan in a traffic stop. The man inside shot a sheriff?s deputy three times before speeding away.
Colorado Dept. of Corrections via Reuters
As more police followed, the man opened fire again.
?When he came by me, he was running I?d say around 100 miles an hour, just had his left arm out the window, and he was just shooting,? said Rex Hoskins, chief of the Decatur, Texas, police. ?He wasn?t planning on being taken alive.?
Authorities say the suspect collided with an 18-wheeler, got out of his car and kept firing until officers shot him. Medical examiners in Tarrant County, Texas, said that Ebel died Thursday afternoon. An autopsy was under way Friday.
Inside the suspect?s mangled car, authorities found a pizza delivery uniform that police believe may be linked to the murder of Nathan Leon, a Domino?s delivery man, on Sunday in Golden, Colo.
The car in the crash had a Colorado license plate and matches at least the vague description of the car that was seen outside Clements? home.
The deputy who made the traffic stop, James Boyd of the Montague County, Texas, sheriff?s department, was wearing a bulletproof vest and was taken to a hospital in Fort Worth. He was recovering Friday.
Sources told KUSA, the NBC affiliate in Denver, that Ebel had been recruited into a white supremacist gang called the 211 Crew.
Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, said the gang was extremely vicious. He said it requires its members who leave prison to make money through criminal enterprises and return it to gang leaders.
He said the gang has a ?blood in, blood out? ideology, meaning that its members must carry out a violent attack to get in and can?t get out until they themselves die.
The gang was implicated in the 1997 killing of an African immigrant at a Denver bus stop. One of its members, Nathan Thill, pleaded guilty to murder and said at his sentencing that the immigrant was wearing an ?enemy uniform,? which Potok said was understood to mean black skin.
The gang is believed to have several hundred to 1,000 members, most of them in Colorado prisons. It gets its name from a section of the California penal code that deals with robbery. Potok said it was not clear why the gang was named for that section.
?The bulk of it is still inside the prisons, but increasingly they?re spilling out onto the streets,? he said. ?A lot of drug-running, weapons trafficking, other crimes. They?re well-known for the harshness of the discipline on members ? disobey a rule and you?re risking your life or a serious beating.?
EARLIER:
Man in Texas car chase, shootout may have ties to Colorado prison chief death
Manhunt on for killer of Colorado prisons chief
This story was originally published on Fri Mar 22, 2013 9:07 AM EDT
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