Rampage death toll at 7 victims — 22 wounded
ODESSA, Texas — The 36yearold man who terrorized two western Texas towns with an assaultstyle weapon Saturday had been fired from his trucking job a few hours before he led authorities on a chaotic highspeed chase that ended with his death and those of seven others.
Along a 15mile stretch between the sister cities of Midland and Odessa, the gunman indiscriminately fired on motorists and police officers with an AR15style rifle while driving. In addition to seven victims, 22 others were injured.
On Sunday, authorities continued to collect evidence from more than 15 crime scenes, scattered along highways, car dealerships and shopping malls, marked by police tape, bulletriddled cars and a wrecked postal van the gunman had hijacked.
Authorities initially refused to name the gunman Sunday, not wanting to give him “any notoriety for what he did,” said Michael Gerke, the police chief of Odessa. But they later issued a statement identifying the gunman as Seth Aaron Ator of Odessa.
Police officers shot and killed Ator in the parking lot of a movie theater in Odessa, ending a shooting rampage that began after authorities had tried to pull him over for failing to signal a left turn. Although officials said in interviews that the gunman had been fired from his job with a trucking company on Saturday morning, authorities stressed that they had not yet established a clear motive to explain the level of violence and firepower.
“There are no definite answers as to motive or reasons at this point,” Gerke said, “but we are fairly certain that the subject did act alone.”
The chief said it was not immediately known whether the gunman had legally purchased the rifle. Similar assaultstyle weapons have been used in most of the deadliest shootings this decade, including at a country music festival in Las Vegas, a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and a nightclub in Orlando.
While the gunman in the latest attack had a criminal record, there were no open warrants for his arrest when police tried to pull him over Saturday, Gerke said. Ator had been arrested in August 2001 on misdemeanor charges of criminal trespass and evading arrest, according to state records.
The gunman sped away from the state troopers who had tried to pull him over, and then hijacked a U.S. Postal Service van, killed its driver and began firing at people randomly as he drove. In cell phone video from witnesses that captured the final moments of the shooting rampage, the postal van speeds into view and slams into a police cruiser outside the movie theater in Odessa. A burst of gunfire followed as officers who had been chasing the van rushed out and shot the gunman, who appeared to still be inside the van.
Authorities said Sunday that the seven people killed in the attack ranged in age from 15 to 57, including Mary Granados, 29, the driver of the postal van.