Suspect in official’s killing dies in shootout

DECATUR, TEXAS — A former inmate and white supremacist who may be tied to the slaying of the Colorado prisons chief is dead after a high-speed chase and shootout with Texas deputies, authorities said Friday.

Evan Spencer Ebel, 28 had a long record of convictions since 2003 for various crimes, including assaulting a prison guard in 2008. He is also suspected in the killing of a pizza delivery man whose body was found Sunday.

Ebel was a member of a white supremacist prison gang called the 211s, a federal law enforcement official told The Associated Press.

Colorado officials would not confirm Ebel’s gang ties or say whether they had anything to do with the death of prisons director Tom Clements, who was shot to death Tuesday night after he answered his front door. But they said that, since Clements’ killing, state troopers have provided extra security for Colorado government officials.

“We are at a heightened alert,” Steve Johnson of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation said at a Friday news conference.

Denver police said they were “confident” Ebel was also involved in the death of the pizza man, Nathan Leon, 27.

The FBI and local officials were also beginning to examine another case that appears similar to the Clements killing — the Jan. 31 slaying of a prosecutor who was gunned down as he walked across a parking lot to the courthouse in Kaufman, about 160 kilometres from where Ebel crashed and got into the shootout.

Authorities have investigated whether Mark Hasse’s death could be linked to a white supremacist gang. On Friday, they said they will see if there is any connection to Clements’ murder.

Ebel’s tie to Clements’ killing comes from the car he drove — a black Cadillac with mismatched Colorado plates that fit the description of a vehicle spotted outside Clements’ home just before the prison chief was shot.

Texas authorities spotted the car Thursday and gave chase after Ebel shot and wounded a deputy. They fatally shot him after he crashed into a semi and opened fire on his pursuers.

Ebel is not on the radar of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups, but the centre rates the gang as one of the most vicious whitesupremacist groups operating in the nation’s prisons.