Police remain on the lookout for a man accused of opening fire Downtown on Sixth Street just after bars closed Sunday morning, killing one woman and injuring four others – three of whom were taken to Brackenridge Hospital with injuries considered to be not life-threatening. The fifth victim refused treatment from EMS.
The shootings occurred in a crowded scene on the 200 block of East Sixth Street at 2:17am. There was a second shooting reported seven minutes later on the 800 block of Trinity Street, inside a parking garage. Police initially thought that the two shootings in near proximity indicated an “active shooter” situation, in which one person was going around the Downtown area opening fire in various locations. That was quickly debunked, however, as police were able to deduce that the Trinity situation was a separate assault which yielded no gunshot injuries. APD Chief of Staff Brian Manley said at a press briefing Downtown just a few minutes before 5am that civilians were able to detain and disarm the individual who fired the gun in the parking garage until police arrived on scene. Manley said the individual who fired that shot was taken to Brackenridge Hospital to be treated for injuries he received “by citizens who came in and put a stop to his violence.”
Manley provided very few details about the shooting on Sixth Street, saying only that an initial investigation points to “a disturbance between individuals” as its impetus. He asked that anybody who used their phone to record the shooting, events leading up to it, or aftermath on-scene send the footage to APD’s Public Information office via the email address police3@austintexas.gov.
“I think we have a benefit,” he said. “There are a lot of people who captured either the events leading up to or the aftermath.”
This article appears in July 29 • 2016.