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Three people are dead and many more are hospitalized following a deadly shooting over the weekend at a popular West Sixth Street bar.
The incident is being investigated by the FBI as a potential act of terrorism, but authorities say it’s still too early to determine a motive.
Austin Mayor Kirk Watson, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis and other local officials held a press conference sharing more information on the victims of the shootings.
We’ll also delve into what’s known regarding the 53-year-old alleged gunman.
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The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:08] Thank you for tuning in. This is Austin Signal and today we are bringing you live special coverage from KUT News. We are waiting on an update from the Austin Police Department as law enforcement continues their investigation on the weekend’s deadly shooting at a bar on West 6th. Three people were killed including the alleged shooter and many others were hospitalized as a result of their injuries. The suspect has been identified. And again, we are expecting an update from the Austin Police Department in a few minutes. We will be bringing you that coverage live here on KUT News 90.5, on the KUT app and online at kut.org. I’m your host, Jerry Quijano, and we will be back with you in just a few moments. This is Austin Signal, I’m your host, Jerry Keconnell. This is live special coverage from KUT News. We are awaiting an update from the Austin Police Department on the deadly shooting that took place early Sunday morning at Buford’s on West 6th Street. It appears that Mayor Kirk Watson is at the podium now. Let’s listen in. All right, we are getting you that feed right now. That press conference is just about to begin again. We are getting a live update from the Austin Police Department. There was a deadly shooting at Buford’s early Sunday morning. Three people died at the scene, including the lead shooter and multiple others were hospitalized as a result of their injuries. Austin Mayor Kirk Watson on Sunday called the shooting at an extremely significant moment. The shooting happened. Just before 2 a.m. On Sunday at Buford’s that’s a bar at the intersection of West 6 and Rio Grande streets The suspect has been identified. He was identified last night as 53 year old Indiaga Di Agna Austin police chief lisa davis said the suspect drove around the block several times in an suv before he stopped Uh, let’s go to the press conference now
Chief Lisa Davis [00:02:15] and the motives behind this crime. I want to thank everyone that has supported our communities and this response. Families will need this in the days ahead. I also want to think victim services that have come in addition to APD’s victim services that includes FBI, the Travis County District Attorney and multiple calls of people wanting to help. I cannot imagine the grief, pain, and loss these families are feeling today, and my heart is with them. Savitha Shawn and Ryder Harrington. To the impacted families that are still waiting for answers, we are here for you. A Family Resource Center is being stood up. As we know, numerous people have been affected by this, and we are daily, hourly, getting calls of people that have been victimized by this. The department will be releasing information soon on what that looks like. When I arrived on the scene, again, it was complex and very large. The work being done by the Austin Fire Department, the Travis County Emergency Medical Service, and APD was quite impressive. Once the initial scene was secured, we reached out to our federal partners to assist in this resource intensive scene and to address concerns of potential terrorism. We are working in tandem with the FBI, conducting numerous interviews and gathering evidence. If you can imagine, we have over 150 witnesses to this event that we are working with the FBI. And we are also investigating an officer-involved shooting. As I have committed in the past, in any officer- involved shooting, we will be releasing info as quickly as possible. Later this week, potentially Thursday, we’ll be releasing body-worn camera of this as well as information on the suspect, including criminal history. Again, we are making, and I want you to know that we are making tremendous significant progress in this case, but it will take time. In closing, I want to take again a minute to as a mayor, echo the mayor and talk about just the fantastic work that the Austin Police Department with the Travis County Emergency Medical Services did here. Multiple lives were saved. You know, in Texas, we’re fortunate to have the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center, and that’s the Alert Center through Texas State University. And that training, there’s no doubt that that and that coordinated response with EMS saved lives.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:48] That was Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis on to Mayor Kirk Watson.
Mayor Kirk Watson [00:04:53] I also want to point out that we’re joined today by our city manager, T.C. Broadnax, and council member who represents the downtown area, Zoe Cadry. Before we take your questions, I want to say that we recognize that this is a very traumatic moment in our city. But when I talk about being proud of APD and FIRE and EMS, I wanna also say how proud I am in how the people that are this city have reacted with such great compassion. We are all mourning together and grieving as a group, but we’re seeing tremendous compassion and love coming out of the people of Austin. And so I urge everyone at this moment of trauma to reach out to each other and take care of each other. And take care of our home, be with each other. While this is a dark moment, our people are creating a lot of light in Austin, Texas. And what we do for each other matters. So now we’re happy to take a few questions.
APD Press [00:06:07] We can start over here and then we’ll go here.
Conference attendee [00:06:10] Yeah. Has this impacted any plans, security plans for Southwest L1?
Chief Lisa Davis [00:06:16] It is not, you know, we have a press conference, I believe next Thursday for our spring festival season. And certainly as we look at Austin and what makes Austin so great are those events. We are a major city police department and we go in best practices. I feel confident that the resources we have in play South by Southwest will continue on and it will be a safe festival season
APD Press [00:06:43] Do we know how the suspects acquired these guns and whether they were acquired legally?
Chief Lisa Davis [00:06:47] The guns were required legally, I believe in 2017 out of San Antonio they were purchased.
Conference attendee [00:06:53] Can you tell us more about the victims? I think you said Savita, Sean, and Ryder Harrison.
Chief Lisa Davis [00:06:59] Ryder Harrington, yes.
Conference attendee [00:07:00] Can you tell us more? Are they UT students? I think Ryder is a Texas Tech student.
Chief Lisa Davis [00:07:06] I don’t know as far as what school they went to, that is certainly something that we can look into. But they were young, I believe Ryder was maybe 22 and Savita 24, or 20 respectively.
Conference attendee [00:07:19] Are you able to share any details about the warrants that were executed yesterday?
Chief Lisa Davis [00:07:25] So anytime that you’re doing an investigation like this, it’s gonna lead to search warrants. And so those warrants were based off information of where this person lived, addresses where he congregated, and evidence was taken from that.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:38] We are listening to live special coverage of the update this afternoon from Austin Police Department in response to the weekend’s deadly shooting at Buford. We have gotten names of two of the victims so far, Savita Sean and Ryder Harrington. Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis is currently in the middle of answering some questions. We’re going to work to get back there. Let’s go back now.
EMS Chief Robert Luckritz [00:08:00] Chief of Austin Travis County EMS. EMS as well as our fellow public safety partners work very closely with the autonomous vehicle vendors that operate here in the city of Austin. We had more than 20 assets resources that responded to this event. As was said at an earlier press conference we were on scene within 57 seconds and so in the grand scheme of the impact on the overall incident we don’t believe it had any impact on patient outcomes. I will say that we’re already in touch with Waymo and the autonomous vehicles to to give them our concerns and work with them in order to try to address this moving forward.
Conference attendee [00:08:32] If you guys could raise your hands, they will still hear them. Jamal and for the chief and for Asian Durant, can you explain what more you’ve learned about possible motive? And I think it was reported that the suspect had a shirt underneath the sweatshirt that showed an Iranian flag. Is there a direct connection to the war in Iran with the shooting?
Chief Lisa Davis [00:08:53] So I think for our purposes, you know, as we’re, you know, looking at the totality of this and certainly as a police chief and we’re coming in and we are getting this information and we see those indicators, we see, you know, the second shirt with the Iran, the picture of the shawl on that T-shirt as well. You know, we’re thinking about events and what’s occurring in the country as well and so in addition to the fact that this was a huge complex scene, we are calling in those federal partners to take a look at that as well, and so The motives, all of those things, that’s what this investigation is about right now.
Conference attendee [00:09:26] What do you want? I don’t want.
Chief Lisa Davis [00:09:27] Oh, sure. Go ahead.
FBI Alex Doran [00:09:29] Thank you. So I’ll add on that. But first, I just want to also express our regards to the victims, the victims families, those impacted by this this tragic event. It’s not just those that were were injured or killed, but obviously those that witnessed it are going to be forever impacted. So just let them know we stand with you. And we are our thoughts are with you. With regards to the question, yes, we Like, our ultimate goal and everything we do is to determine the motive, right? We’re looking for connections that he possibly had, witnesses, as the chief had mentioned. We are pouring through thousands of hours of video. We have massive amounts of both digital and physical evidence. And this is a around-the-clock, 24-hour investigation at this point. And any declarations on what led to that motive would be premature, right? We want to make sure that we have our facts 100% correct or as close to, or at least we’ve tracked down every possible lead that we can because that’s what we owe to the victims, right. That’s what you guys want answers for, but more importantly, we owe that to the victims and their families to be right. So we don’t want to speculate or make any guesses at this stage of the investigation as to what that motive ultimately was.
Conference attendee [00:10:52] But Jamal, maybe feedback off of that, are you all looking into anyone else that may be connected with the suspect at this time that you know of? Or is there anything else about the suspect you can share?
Chief Lisa Davis [00:11:01] Again, we will have some criminal history, some background, that type of thing on Thursday when we address the officer involved shooting. But as far as anyone else, that’s all part of what that investigation is currently.
Conference attendee [00:11:11] Given some of his interactions with your agency previously, some of the social media posts attributed to him, have your agency or any agency identified him as a potential concern or a threat before this?
Chief Lisa Davis [00:11:22] We have not at the Austin Police Department now.
FBI Alex Doran [00:11:25] No, he was not previously on our radar.
Conference attendee [00:11:29] Agent Doran. I had a question for you yesterday. You mentioned that there was this potential nexus to terrorism that was being investigated. Can you tell us what that means in regular words and also what those you know what we’ve learned about?
FBI Alex Doran [00:11:44] So any act of targeted violence, which is what this was, we’re going to pursue all investigative lines, right? And that is certainly one of them, along with multiple other avenues of where this could go, right. It’s always very difficult to determine what’s in an individual’s mind that leads them to commit this type of violence. And so we will continue to, like I said, pour through the evidence, talk to witnesses, talk to friends, talk associates that knew this person, obviously tracking movement leading up to and on the night of the event and also going back as far back as we can trace, and that’s what the FBI does, and we’re doing that in lockstep with our partners, and we will continue to do that until we get that answer to determine what that ultimate motivation was.
APD Press [00:12:25] We’ll take two or three more questions, we’re gonna start in the back here, and then we’ll go to Angela and end with Matte. Thank you. For either the Chief or Special Agent Duran, how closely are you working with other major cities, like the NYPD, the LAPD, we know New York put out a statement saying that they saw what happened in Austin and they’re taking it seriously and it has put them on high alert. Are you talking to other cities? Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Chief Lisa Davis [00:12:48] Yeah, I think being part of the major city chiefs association, those are in contact with all of those chiefs and what’s going on. And everybody better be on heightened alert. I mean, this is what happens across the country. We all need to be aware of, and certainly as major cities, you look at best practices and you look the way you keep people safe. That’s absolutely important, and there’s probably not a police chief across this country that’s not talking to someone.
APD Press [00:13:12] Angela and Dante, you’ll have the final question. So yesterday, three patients were in critical condition. Has there been any status updates on the hospitalized patients?
Chief Lisa Davis [00:13:21] I believe one patient will be taking off life support sometime today and then two other patients are still critical.
Conference attendee [00:13:30] Can you clarify the victim’s names and age please?
Chief Lisa Davis [00:13:35] The victims that were killed, Savita, Sean, I think she’s 24. S-A-V-I-T-H-A, S-H A-N, and Ryder, R-Y-D-E-R, Harrington, H-A R-R-I N-G-T O-N. I believe he’s 22.
APD Press [00:13:59] Do you want to take final questions?
Conference attendee [00:14:00] And I’m curious if you think that Austin’s. From San Francisco State University and it seems like it has contributed to the past.
Chief Lisa Davis [00:14:08] Absolutely. When you look at the, again, I talked about the Alert Center and our partnership with Texas State and what that does. And I made a note to myself because it is, we have CAST, which is our Counter Assault Strike Team, CAST. And that includes EMS, it includes AFD, and APD. And they set in this very room every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night to address potential threat concerns from our entertainment areas. And so That is something that we have to be prepared for. When you have large events, large-scale events, and we do this in our other large- scale events as well, when you’re talking South By, you’re talking about other things where there are large crowds, we are there and prepared. So absolutely.
Mayor Kirk Watson [00:14:50] If I might add one thing to that, in 2024, and then Chief Likritz and I talked about this yesterday, I guess it was in 2024. The city of Austin also created the downtown area command with EMS so that we would be better ready. That’s what the recommendations coming from the professionals in EMS said they wanted and needed that sort of thing. So we would be better ready You know, God forbid there was a situation like this. And we think that also played a significant role in addition to what the chief was saying. Thank you all.
Jerry Quijano [00:15:32] All right, you have been listening to live special coverage of an update from the Austin Police Department as well as Austin Mayor Kirk Watson. It was an update on the shooting that took place Sunday morning at Buford’s. This is KUT News 90.5. We’re on the KUT app and online at KUT.org. You’re listening to the Austin Signal. We missed a little chunk of the beginning of the press conference because of some technical difficulties. So we’re going to update you now for the remaining time that we have left on the show with the information that we did, were able to take from that press conference. And right now I want to bring in Chelsey Zhu. She is a digital producer here at KUT News. And she’s been reporting on this story since early yesterday morning. Thanks for your reporting, Chelsey. Thanks for being here. Hi, Jerry. So we have been reporting that three people died as a result of this shooting, including the alleged shooter. And we got a little bit of an update a little while ago on the names of the other two victims. What do we hear?
Chelsey Zhu [00:16:28] Yes, so before today, the other two deceased had not been publicly named and police chief Lisa Davis just said identified them as Savita Sean and Ryder Harrington. And she said that they were both young people, both in their 20s. She also gave an update on there were three people yesterday who are identified as being in critical condition among the injured. And she gave the update that two of the patients are still critical and one patient will be taken off life support today.
Jerry Quijano [00:16:59] Yes, and we will continue to do more reporting. You can find that this afternoon on All Things Considered and on our website, KUT.org and the KUT app. We also heard an update about the alleged suspect. He’s been identified as 53-year-old Ndiaga Diogna. What updates have we heard since yesterday? What do we hear today?
Chelsey Zhu [00:17:19] There was not a lot of new information, I would say. So yesterday we heard from the FBI that they were investigating this as, you know, potentially being connected to terrorism. And that was mostly still what they were saying at the press conference today. They did not want to elaborate on possible motives at this time. They did say that the two guns I believe that he used in the shooting, which was pistol and a rifle that those were acquired legally. Um, and they also mentioned, you know, search warrants, um, and that, you know, they, they had executed search warrence yesterday, um at what they believe to be his home and in Pflugerville.
Jerry Quijano [00:18:01] Yeah, and one of the reporters at the press conference asked if Indiagna had ever been identified by APD. Did you catch that answer?
Chelsey Zhu [00:18:11] Yes, I think they said that he was not on their radar previously.
Jerry Quijano [00:18:15] Okay, and I know you have been following this story and there’s lots of details and lots that we’re still reporting on and following. Was there anything else about the press conference that stood out to you right now?
Chelsey Zhu [00:18:26] Um, uh, I don’t think so. Uh, the, the only main thing was that, um, we had our reporter ask about South by security plans. Um, and, uh Lisa Davis just said that there’s nothing new to share at this moment, but they are planning to have, I believe a press conference next week to talk about, uh yeah, their role in South by.
Jerry Quijano [00:18:44] And it sounded as though Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said there would also be another update on Thursday because of the officer-involved shooting. So it seems like maybe we can expect to get more information in the days ahead. Still lots to be found as we continue this investigation. And again, we have been following the story at KUT.org and on the KUT app and we will continue to do so for the duration of the investigation. And beyond that… Chelsey I wanted to ask you a little bit about reporting the story because this happened at a really early time on Sunday morning You know we have a newscast during the week not so much on the weekends So I wanted just kind of lift the curtain for our listeners a little but when you were the on-call reporter this weekend That’s why you have been reporting on the story when you first found out who did you reach out to who were you? Trying to confirm with
Chelsey Zhu [00:19:33] Yes, so I believe I was awake at four in the morning. That was just something that happened to be awake. It was the first thing that I was seeing on social media. So then I reached out and called our on-call editor and then from there we made a coverage plan. We put out the initial story. APD held their first press conference on the shooting at 5 a.m. Yesterday morning. So, we wrote up the story from there, the official information that was confirmed, and then from there we began pulling in pretty much almost the entire newsroom. There were reporters going out to the scene at the time, what we believed to be where search warrants were being executed related to the suspect. We had people, multimedia or multimedia team at Buford’s, and there was another press conference later in the morning with more information, so yeah, it was really all hands on deck effort.
Jerry Quijano [00:20:28] Yeah, and we’re starting to get more details about what happened. There are some social media videos as well, showing the insides of Buford’s and the scenes after. You spoke with somebody who was on 6th Street the night of, what did they see?
Chelsey Zhu [00:20:41] Yes. So he was there with a friend and he was actually outside of Buford’s. He was walking back from a different bar. He said around 2 a.m., around closing time, and that is when this person, Kelsen Lee, he said that he then heard, you know, while he was walking outside around six gunshots. And then as he was approaching Buford’s, you know, he saw people running, a large amount of people running away, and then he said, you know, he saw bodies on the floor, and people were immediately, you know, giving CPR, and that police came very shortly afterwards to give aid.
Jerry Quijano [00:21:22] Okay, we have more reporting about this story at KUT.org. I did want to ask, let me just update everyone. We have been listening to an update from the Austin Police Department. We did hear the names of the two victims, Savitha Shun and Ryder Harrington. What else, Chelsey, are we working to confirm and what else are we reaching out to officials about right now and in the wake of the shooting?
Chelsey Zhu [00:21:47] Yeah, so right now, I believe that we are looking into more information about the suspect, and we are also working on reaching out to the victims and their families, including people who are injured, who were injured in the shooting, and just seeing, you know, what they feel comfortable sharing, what they want to tell us about their loved ones.
Jerry Quijano [00:22:06] Okay, well we will continue to bring you more information. This newsroom has been working since early yesterday morning for lots of coverage around this and there’s lots more to be covered. We have been speaking with Chelsey Zhu. She is a digital producer here at KUT and has been reporting on the shooting. Chelsey, thanks for being with us today. Thank you. And again, we will continued to bring this coverage and all things considered coming up at 3.30 today and we will have more coverage on the KUT app and online at kut.org. If you’re just catching us at the end of the show, just got a little rundown here for you. We heard an update from the Austin Police Department, Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis and Austin Mayor Kirk Watson today. They confirmed the identities of two of the victims, Savitha Sean and Ryder Harrington. They did say that the guns used in the attack at Buford’s were acquired legally. They said they have executed warrants in Del Valle and Pflugerville. It’s still too early at this point to talk about a possible motive, but we are expecting more information, more press conferences in the coming days. And there were three patients in critical condition, two remain in critical conditions, and one patient is, I believe, will be coming off of life support, is what Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said earlier today. So we will have more for you on our websites, on our app. And probably here on Austin Signal tomorrow as well. So thank you for tuning in. Thank you for being with us. I’m your host, Jerry Keechanel, and we will continue reporting for you.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
