Texas Shooting Spree Suspect IDed: He's a Marine

Estaban Smith also connected to wife's murder
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted May 28, 2013 11:14 AM CDT
Texas Shooting Spree Suspect IDed: He's a Marine
Cars enter the main gate at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, NC on Friday, Dec. 2, 2005. Shooting suspect Estaban Smith was stationed at Camp LeJeune.   (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

Police have identified the man they believe went on a random shooting spree in Texas on Sunday—and he turns out to be Esteban Smith, 23, an active-duty Marine who has also been connected to a murder in North Carolina, the New York Daily News reports. The victim in that killing? Smith's wife, Rubi Estefania Smith, whose body was found in a Jacksonville, NC, motel room near Camp Lejeune, reports WNCT. Police say she suffered a knife wound. They didn't discover her body until Sunday afternoon—hours after Esteban Smith was dead.

Smith, who was stationed at Camp Lejeune, allegedly fired off an assault rifle as he drove his pickup truck through two Texas counties on Sunday, taking aim at seemingly arbitrary victims starting around 4:30am. One woman was killed and five others, including the Concho County sheriff, were wounded in the rampage. Smith was eventually killed in a shootout with officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Wildlife Game Warden, THV 11 reports. Hundreds of rounds of ammunition were recovered from his car. (More Texas stories.)

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