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The gunman opened
fire at about 2:15 a.m. local time before fleeing, Austin police
chief of staff Brian Manley told reporters.
Police in a statement late on Sunday said they were seeking to
find a 24-year-old man named Endicott McCray on a felony arrest
warrant in connection with the shooting.
The motive for the attack, which occurred just minutes after
bars closed, was not immediately clear.
"It was a very chaotic scene," Manley said. He described people
emerging from clubs and bars running in all directions at the
sound of gunfire, as police officers on patrol rushed to the
scene.
The gunman killed a woman in her 20s and wounded three other
women, who were transported to a local hospital with injuries
that were serious but not life-threatening, Austin-Travis County
Emergency Medical Services spokesman Mike Benavides told
reporters.
The shooting in the Texas state capital follows several recent
major acts of gun violence in the United States.
On June 12, a gunman who sympathized with Islamist extremist
groups killed 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in
the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
On July 7, a U.S. military veteran shot and killed five police
officers in Dallas in the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement
since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Just over a week later
another gunman killed three officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The attackers in all three incidents were killed by police.
Austin, whose downtown area is known for its lively music scene,
has a population of more than 900,000.
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by
Catherine Evans and Michael Perry)
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