Desai had illegally bought a rifle in 2009 and legally bought a shotgun in 2011.
The Houston Police Homicide Division has confirmed that the Indian-origin lawyer who was killed by the security forces after he went on a shooting spree that injured nine was a Nazi sympathizer.
According to Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, the gunman who was killed by the police was Attorney Nathan Desai, but the police department is to yet confirm his identity.
“Multiple officers engaged the suspect, who was shooting randomly at passersby as well as anybody he could put his sights on,” Capt. D.W. Ready, head of Huston Police Homicide Division said. “He was wearing a military-style apparel, I don’t know exactly what nationality or exactly what army or anything like that,†he added.
Mayor Turner went on to say that the lone shooter was depressed over matters at the law firm where he worked.
According to the profile of Desai listed on the State Bar of Texas website, he practiced business, criminal and family law.
Desai had illegally bought a rifle in 2009 and legally bought a shotgun in 2011. These two weapons were used for Monday’s attack
According to Ready, Nathan Desai was dressed in an unusual military uniform and had Nazi emblems on him. A police raid later conducted in his house also found Nazi symbols.
“At this point, we are very open-minded as to the motive,†acting Chief of Police Martha Montalve was quoted by CNN.
When police team responded to the shooting, Desai shot at them and was killed when police returned fire, Montalvo said.
She also added that the lawyer had some “issues†at his law office.
Desai’s name was written with the ‘s’ capitalized in media reports in Houston, making it sound European, but his father was later identified as Prakash Desai.
The shooter’s father, 80-year-old Prakash Desai told KPRC TV that his son was seen “worried†for the last few months because his law practice was not doing so well.
Houston Chronicle reported that Prakash Desai is a retired geologist and the police found in his flat several military items that went back to the Civil War.
The daily also added that police found a Thompson submachine gun in Desai Porche and 0.45 caliber handgun that he used against the police.
This is the second mass shooting by a person of Indian descent in the US after Biswanath Halder went on a rampage at the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland in 2013, taking hostages, killing a graduate student and wounding another and a professor.
He was captured alive and sentenced to life after a trial.
In January 2016 Mainak Sarkar caused a lockdown at the University of California at Los Angeles when he killed a professor there. He had also killed his wife and committed suicide.